Wednesday, November 3, 2021

MacOS: Hardware Language Keyboard Availability

Apple produces a large number of different keyboards for specific languages, but which ones you can get depends on where you live. Each country has its own selection of them for sale, and Apple stores do not ship outside their own country, so getting a particular keyboard can be frustrating.

Even the US online store only has about half the total variety of keyboards. Those not available in the US are English International, Belgian, Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Dutch, French Canadian, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Icelandic, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian, Slovak, Swedish/Finnish, Thai, and Turkish.

Thursday, October 28, 2021

Mac OS 12 Monterey Released: New Language Features

MacOS 12 Monterey was released October 25, 2021. There are no new system languages or spell check languages, but several new language keyboards: Amharic (Ge'ez), Assyrian (Syriac), Fula (Adlam), Igbo, Navajo, and Rohingya.

The keyboard shortcut to bring up the Character Viewer (Emoji & Symbols) has been changed to Fn E.

A list of help articles for Monterey on language issues can be found at this page.

Other new features according to Apple’s notes are:

+New dictionaries for India: Urdu–English, Tamil–English, Telugu–English, and Gujarati–English.

+New thesaurus and idiom dictionary for China mainland

+New dictionaries for Hong Kong: a Traditional Chinese–English dictionary of Cantonese colloquialisms and a Traditional Chinese dictionary of Standard Mandarin with Cantonese pronunciations.

+Suggestions for Cantonese and Shanghainese: Type words and phrases in Cantonese and Shanghainese more easily when using the Simplified Chinese keyboard.

+Magic Keyboard now supports keyboard shortcuts for over 100 layouts, automatically adapting them for the layout you’re using.

+On-device dictation: Available in Arabic (Saudi Arabia), Cantonese (Hong Kong), English (Australia, Canada, India, Singapore, UK, U.S.), French (France), German (Germany), Italian (Italy), Japanese (Japan), Korean (Korea), Mandarin Chinese (China mainland, Taiwan), Russian (Russia), Spanish (Mexico, Spain, U.S.), Turkish (Turkey), and Yue Chinese (China mainland).

+Neural text-to-speech voice in more languages: Swedish (Sweden), Danish (Denmark), Norwegian (Norway), and Finnish (Finland).

+Mixed English and Indic language support in Siri: You can ask Siri to play your favorite song, call a friend, and more using a mix of Indian English and your native language. Nine languages are supported: Hindi, Telugu, Kannada, Marathi, Tamil, Bengali, Gujarati, Malayalam, and Punjabi.

+A new SF Arabic system font features a refined, contemporary design that is integrated with the SF font, providing a clear, cohesive reading experience.

Tuesday, June 8, 2021

iOS: New Language Features in iPadOS 15

Apple has released a preview of new features in iPadOS 15 to be issued later this year. Below are the parts of interest in the language area:

+Vietnamese VNI and VIQR keyboards

+QuickPath for more languages: Dutch, Hindi (Latin), Russian, Swedish, Turkish, and Vietnamese.

+New keyboard layouts: Ainu, Amharic, Fula (Adlam), Igbo, Navajo, Rohingya, Syriac, and Tigrinya .

+Enhanced 10-key layout for Chinese Pinyin: Lets you quickly switch to QWERTY, access symbols more easily, and type words that share the same keys with greater accuracy by allowing you to select the exact Pinyin for more than just the first syllable in the phrase.

+Smart Replies for new Indic languages: Urdu, Bangla, Tamil, Punjabi, Marathi, Gujarati, Malayalam, Telugu, Kannada, and Odiya.

+Neural text-to-speech voice in more languages: Swedish (Sweden), Danish (Denmark), Norwegian (Norway), and Finnish (Finland).

+Mixed English and Indic language support in Siri: Hindi, Telugu, Kannada, Marathi, Tamil, Bengali, Gujarati, Malayalam, and Punjabi.

+New Voice Control languages: Mandarin Chinese (China mainland), Cantonese (Hong Kong), French (France), and German (Germany).

+New dictionaries for India: Urdu–English, Tamil–English, Telugu–English, and Gujarati–English.

+New idiom dictionary for China mainland

+New dictionaries for Hong Kong: A Traditional Chinese–English idiom dictionary, a Traditional Chinese–English dictionary of Cantonese colloquialisms, and a new Traditional Chinese dictionary.

+Dialect lexicon support for Cantonese and Shanghainese: Type words in Pinyin using native Cantonese or Shanghainese dialectal spellings.

+On-device dictation in more regions and languages, including Arabic (Saudi Arabia), Cantonese (Hong Kong), English (Australia, Canada, India, Singapore, UK, U.S.), French (France), German (Germany), Italian (Italy), Japanese (Japan), Korean (Korea), Mandarin Chinese (China mainland, Taiwan), Russian (Russia), Spanish (Mexico, Spain, U.S.), Turkish (Turkey), and Yue Chinese (China mainland).

+Improved Japanese Support for Scribble and Note Taking.

+Various Improvements in Translation.app

MacOS: New Language Features in MacOS 12 Monterey

Apple has released a preview of new features in MacOS 12 Monterey, which will be issued in the fall of 2021. Below are the parts that relate to languages.

+New keyboard layouts: Ainu, Amharic, Fula (Adlam), Igbo, Navajo, Rohingya, Syriac, and Tigrinya

+New Voice Control languages, including Mandarin Chinese (China mainland), Cantonese (Hong Kong), French (France), and German (Germany).

+New dictionaries for India, including Urdu–English, Tamil–English, Telugu–English, and Gujarati–English.

+New Simplified Chinese idiom dictionary for China mainland

+New dictionaries for Hong Kong, including a Traditional Chinese–English idiom dictionary, a Traditional Chinese–English dictionary of Cantonese colloquialisms, and a new Traditional Chinese dictionary.

+Dialect lexicon support for Cantonese and Shanghainese: Type words in Pinyin using native Cantonese or Shanghainese dialectal spellings.

+On-device dictation, available in Arabic (Saudi Arabia), Cantonese (Hong Kong), English (Australia, Canada, India, Singapore, UK, U.S.), French (France), German (Germany), Italian (Italy), Japanese (Japan), Korean (Korea), Mandarin Chinese (China mainland, Taiwan), Russian (Russia), Spanish (Mexico, Spain, U.S.), Turkish (Turkey), and Yue Chinese (China mainland)*.

+Neural text-to-speech voice in more languages: Swedish (Sweden), Danish (Denmark), Norwegian (Norway), and Finnish (Finland)*.

+Mixed English and Indic language support in Siri for Hindi, Telugu, Kannada, Marathi, Tamil, Bengali, Gujarati, Malayalam, and Punjabi.

*Requires Mac with M1 chip

Saturday, May 1, 2021

MacOS: ABC Extended Keyboard Further Extended

A poster in the Apple Support Communities (ASC) has pointed out that Apple's ABC Extended keyboard layout lacks the ability to produced chracters with the diaeresis below diacritic. This is useful for certain romanization systems for the Arabic script used in a wide range of languages. A custom ABC Extended layout which includes Combining Diaeresis Below at Option-Shift R is available here.