Ladino/Keyboard

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Existing Resources

  • There are no existing keyboards specifically for Ladino since it is written in so many different scripts, including two types of Hebrew (Rashi and Meruba), Cyrillic, and at least five types of Latin (English-based, Spanish-based, Turkish-based, Serbo-Croatian-based, and French-based). However, this also means that it can be written on the existing keyboards of all of these languages.
    • Hebrew keyboards can be found on all major platforms, and while it is usually in Meruba script, Rashi script is likely a font option for Hebrew.
    • Cyrillic is a script used for multiple different languages, mostly Slavic languages like Bulgarian, Serbian, Croatian, and Russian, but also other like Kurdish, Romani, and various Turkik languages. Some of these, like Russian, have multiple keyboard options based on various dialects. However, it appears that Cyrillic was mostly used by Sephardic Jews in Bulgaria, so that keyboard may be the most useful. It can be found on Windows 10, Mac OS, and Linux.
    • There are many forms of Latin script that can be used on various platforms, and many (like English, Spanish, and French) have multiple keyboard options based on various dialects and regions. Turkish and Serbian (written in Latin script) can also be found on Windows 10, Mac OS, and Linux.

My Layout

  • I decided to create a keyboard that would combine the characters needed to type Ladino in English-based Latin script, Spanish-based Latin script, and Turkish-based Latin script. This combination would be most useful to an American English speaker learning Ladino, who wants to be able to communicate with other Ladino speakers who use Latin scripts. As such, I added Turkish letters that don't appear in standard English, as well as some Spanish letters with diacritics, two Spanish punctuation marks, and the ability to add acute accents to vowels.
  • This is the Ladino keyboard.
~
`

!
1

¡
@
2

#
3

$
4

%
5

^
6

&
7

*
8

(
9

)
0

_
-

+
=

       
Q
q

W
w

E
e

R
r

T
t

Y
y

U
u
Ü
ü
I
i
İ
ı
O
o
Ö
ö
P
p

{
[

}
]

|
\

        
A
a

S
s
Ş
ş
D
d

F
f

G
g
Ğ
ğ
H
h

J
j

K
k

L
l

:
;

"
'

◌́
           
Z
z

X
x

C
c
Ç
ç
V
v

B
b

N
n
Ñ
ñ
M
m

<
,

>
.

?
/

¿

(Dead keys are in green)

Combinations of inputs that result in other inputs include the following:

  • ◌́ a = á
  • ◌́ e = é
  • ◌́ i = í
  • ◌́ o = ó
  • ◌́ u = ú

Justification

  • I attempted to keep the original layout of symbols and letters the same as the standard US English keyboard so that an English speaker who is used to that layout could learn to use it more easily. The 'new' symbols, which would be used for writing Ladino in the Turkish or Spanish style, are ü, Ü, ı, İ, ö, Ö, ş, Ş, ğ, Ğ, ç, Ç, ñ, and Ñ. Of these, ü, Ü, ç, Ç, ñ, and Ñ would be used for writing Spanish, while ı, İ, ö, Ö, ş, Ş, ğ, Ğ, ç, and Ç would be used for writing Turkish. These keys are Latin with specific diacritics, so they are mapped onto the AltG and AltG Shift of their corresponding base letters. While this may be a social issue if the main purpose of the keyboard was to type in only Turkish or Spanish, this is a keyboard for Ladino, which is inherently a language with no set writing system. As such, the main point of the keyboard is having the ability to access multiple forms of the Latin scripts most commonly used for Ladino.
  • I also mapped the ¡ and the ¿ as onto the AltG of ! and ?, since they are used in Spanish and might be useful to write Ladino, and it doesn't interfere with the basic layout of the keyboard.
  • There is also a dead key, ´, the acute accent, which combines with vowels a, e, i, o, and u (and their capital letters) to give them accents. Some people use these accents when writing Ladino, even when using the general English phonetic transcriptions, so this is a necessity for a user who wants to write in Latin scripts that are commonly used for Ladino. This dead key is, unfortunately, a bit hard to get to - it's the AltG of ' - but in order to make the base keys easy for American English speakers, I didn't want to disrupt the balance of the other keys by putting it in a more accessible place.

Install

  1. Click the setup.exe file
  2. When prompted, allow it to make changes to your computer
  3. Download Keyman EuroLatin keyboard from here. Be sure to download EuroLatin (SIL) + Keyman Desktop
  4. Install Keyman and allow it to make changes to your computer
  5. Click the Keyman icon on your toolbar and select "Spanish (Spain) - Ladino Keyboard with Turkish and Spanish" from the dropdown menu.
  6. You will now be able to write with the Ladino keyboard! To switch back, just select English from the Keyman menu.

Liscense