To type in a “non-Roman” language like Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Arabic, Hindi, Hebrew or many more, you need to change your computer's input language. Here's how.

Adding Input Methods

1. Go to System Preferences

2. Click on the Language & Text icon

3. Click on the Input Sources tab

4. Check the box that says "Show Input menu in menu bar" (you should see your country's flag in the menu bar)

5. Select your language of choice in the left menu

Keyboard Viewer

For many languages, like Arabic and Korean, you will want to use the on-screen keyboard.  You can find it by clicking on your country's flag in the upper right hand corner of the menu bar.

1. Click on your country's flag to select the language you wish to type in (or by keyboard, press option+command+space)

2. Click on the flag again and select "Show Keyboard Viewer"

3. For example, if you selected "2-Set Korean" you should see this keyboard and clicking on any of the buttons will insert its character in the focused textbox.

How to type Simplified Chinese using Pinyin

1. Click on your country's flag, and select Pinyin - Simplified

2. Now you can begin typing pinyin and hit the spacebar to see the corresponding characters. You can choose from one of the characters that popup by either typing the corresponding number, using the arrow keys, or clicking.

3. If you want to type pinyin with tone marks, make sure you have selected the "U.S. Extended" keyboard (go back through steps 1-5 to get this keyboard)

4.  Now you'll be able to use these keyboard shortcuts to type tone marks:

• 1st tone: option A + vowel  
• 2nd tone: option E + vowel  á, é, í, ó, ú, ü
• 3rd tone: option V + vowel   
• 4th tone: option  `+ vowel à, è, ì, ò, ù, ü

5. Alternately, if  you would like to type pinyin with tone marks using the word + tone number (ex: hao2 = háo) you can download the "Pinyinput for Mac"

How to type Japanese using all three alphabets

1. Click on the flag, and select Hiragana

2. Once you begin typing, you can hit the space bar once to convert the hiragana into kanji. If you hit the space bar again, you will be given a scrolling list of kanji to choose from

3. To type katakana, just click on the flag and select "Katakana"

You can now make flashcards and study on Quizlet in dozens of different languages!

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