Nheengatú/Keyboard

Existing resources

• Motorola Nheengatú layout.

This is what I believe to be the only existing keyboard layout for Nheengatú. Motorola has developed it for Android systems and launched it in early 2021, which shows how slow the efforts to preserve the language are. I checked on my cellphone and it is very similar to a regular Portuguese keyboard, but it looks a bit simpler and cleaner. Most characters with diacritics are available on the second level of the keyboard, but it is still possible to compose a few letters on the first level.

The Nheengatú keyboard layout project was developed closely to community members that speak the language, so I think it's fair to say it is a great layout. I did find it weird, however, that the tilda diacritic (~) wasn't placed at all in the first level. From my experience working with data in Nheengatú so far, I would say every sentence has at least one word containing a character with tilda, which makes it a very common diacritic that would be convenient to be placed in the first level.

Keyboard layout

~
`

◌̃

!
1

¡

 

@
2

#
3

$
4

%
5

^
6

&
7

*
8

(
9

)
0

_
-

+
=

       

Q
q

 

W
w

E
e

R
r

T
t

Y
y

U
u

I
i

O
o

P
p

{
[

}
]

|
\

        

A
a

S
s

D
d

F
f

G
g

H
h

J
j

K
k

L
l

:
;

"
'

◌̈
◌́

           

Z
z

X
x

C
c

V
v

B
b

N
n

M
m

<
,

>
.

?
/

¿