Typing Czech diacritics
First of all, I am well aware that helpful buttons are provided for entering Czech diacritics, but I personally would prefer to learn how to type them and how to properly use a Czech QWERTZ keyboard. Most of them are easy, but I am having particular trouble with the letter ď. I've tried all kinds of combinations (even using the On-Screen Keyboard to help) but it is still a challenge.
I've found that Shift + = + D (US QWERTY layout) will produce a capital Ď and that hitting caps lock before (Caps lock -> Shift + = + D) will produce a lowercase ď, but this seems too complicated/impractical.
How do Czechs type ď?
13 Comments
If you have set the keyboard to Czech, then you're looking for this button: http://prntscr.com/gl89w4
It will do all the tricks and let you type all the diacritical letters in our alphabet.
capital Ď - 1) press "SHIFT + the red button" (it makes an imaginary caron, which will get saved in the memory) 2) press again "SHIFT + D" to make capital Ď
lower case ď - 1) "press SHIFT + the red button" (it makes an imaginary caron) 2) press "letter D" to make lower case ď (no "shift" before pressing the 2nd button this time)
Ť, Ň and ť, ň work the same, only press that letter instead of D
letter Ó and ó - 1) press "the red button" (it makes imaginary acute accent) 2) press "SHIFT + O" to make capital Ó or "letter O" to make lowercase ó
Good luck! :-)
Edit: Oh, and of course. This is how we type all the capital letters - Ž Š Č Ř We do not press Capslock every time we need to type these letters.
Oh my goodness this works! I feel like a complete idiot now, but at least I can use the caron. Díky moc!
To mám radost. Nemáš vůbec zač.
I totally appreciate that you're trying to use the Czech keyboard while learning. And you were so close to finding the right combo! I explained nearly the same what you did. Keep it up!
Btw. I feel like all the Czech learners here are pretty smart and awesome people. It takes so little and you understand... :-)
1189
The Czech keyboard has the diacritics in the number row (and you need shift to get the numbers). You could use a Czech keyboard, in most OSs they are already installed.
Thanks! I've actually already got and have been using a Czech keyboard on my OS. The ones in the number row are easy and only take a few moments to memorize. As I mentioned above, I'm really mostly having trouble with ď. The combination I found to produce it seems to require a large sequence of key presses...
Edit: I suppose the same concern exists for ť
- 1189
Ah sorry. On the Czech keyboard, you can get it with Alt Gr+2, then d (or Shift+d for capital). The same goes for Ť/ť, btw. I assume they don't get a key to themselves because they're not all that common letters.
Ahh many thanks! It's not working for me, but that'll be a problem on my end that I'll have to troubleshoot and hopefully resolve. Thanks for the help!
In Ubuntu linux there is a "compose key" entry in the settings. All key combinations that you need for Czech are available by default on your normal US or Intl keyboard. You can choose your compose key, mine is the r-alt key.
- 28
With the Czech layout, you don't press Shift + = + D all together, you first press Shift + = and then D separately to type ď. Similarly with ť.
Here's the Czech keyboard layout for reference. All the red and purple keys are dead keys, pressing them only adds a diacritic over the next letter:
Most operating systems also tend to have the Czech QWERTY keyboard, you can use that if QWERTZ is confusing. The only differences are the positions of Y and Z keys.
Finally, you can also use the Compose key. You can enable it in the keyboard settings on Linux or you can install WinCompose on Windows. You just need to pick which key is going to be the Compose key, I use the Windows key on Linux and the Pause key on Windows. With it, you can type all kinds of accented letters easily. In the following examples keys are pressed separately in a sequence:
Compose ' e → é
Compose c r → ř
Compose o u → ů
Compose " a → ä
Compose = o → ő
Compose ^ o → ô
In case anyone is getting the lower case d with a caron instead of the apostrophe: you need to change the font. I was testing using Notepad where the font is Lucida and could not figure out why it wasn't working, then everything was fixed once I changed the font to Verdana.
