Typing Foreign Alphabets and Enabling IME's

Hello, This page will help you enable the typing and reading of foreign alphabets on your computer. This is a must for many of the languages and language quizzes found on this site. Here are the steps you must take.

For Windows users:

1. Click on the "Start" button and open up "Control Panel".

2. Click on "Date, Time, Language, and Regional Options".

3. On the "Regional and Language Options" window, click on the "Languages" tab and check both boxes to install complex script and East Asian languages. Then click "Apply".

4. Afterwards, go back to the previous window and tab and click on the "Details" button.

5. There will be a window to the left that will show you what languages you have enabled on your keyboard, but to first enable the languages, click on the "Add" button.

6. Now, for languages that can easily be written using a standard English keyboard, make sure the "Input Language" is English. Next, check the box next to "Keyboard layout/IME" and open the pull-down menu of the different languages. You can choose anything from Spanish to French to Greek to Russian. Once this is done, click "Okay".

7. For languages such as Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, or Hebrew, you must change the "Input Language" to that specific language and a "Keyboard layout" will automatically be chosen. Some languages may require you to choose your own preferred layout, but not all.

Once you are finished, a language bar will appear on your desktop screen and you can click on this bar to access the language you want to type. For Chinese and Japanese, please refer to the Japanese and Chinese Writing Zones where there will be more detailed instructions for typing these languages.

For Mac users:

1. Click on the "System Preferences" icon.

2. Click on the "International" icon.

3. Click on the "Input Menu" tab.

4. Put a check by the languages you want and a check by "Show input menu in menu bar".

5. Access the IME's by clicking on the small country flag icon in the menu bar at the top on the right side and choose the language you want to type.