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

Changing keyboard input language

1. Go to the Control Panel by clicking "Start"

2. Under Clock, Language, and Region, click "Change keyboards or other input methods"

3. Make sure you're on the Keyboards and Languages tab, and click the "Change keyboards" button

4. Click the "Add" button

5. Select your language from the drop down menu

6. Now click on the Language Bar tab, and select the following: "Floating on desktop", "Show additional Language bar icons in the taskbar", "and Show text labels on the Language Bar"

 

6. The Language Bar will pop up on your desktop, and from there you will select one of the languages that you added in Step 5.
*To move between language (input sources) press left alt + shift

On-screen keyboard

For many languages, like Arabic and Korean,  you will want to use the on-screen keyboard.  Here are steps to help you find it:

1. Click "Start" and in the search box, type "ease of access".  Then click on  "Ease of Access Center" under "Programs"

2. Click "Start On-Screen Keyboard"

3. Now when you select a language from the Language Bar, the corresponding keyboard will show, when applicable. Here's an example of what the Arabic keyboard looks like:

How to type Simplified Chinese using Pinyin

1. Select "CH Chinese (Simplified, PRC)" from the Language Bar

2. Now you can begin typing pinyin and hit the spacebar to see the corresponding characters

3. Alternately, if  you would like to type pinyin with tone marks using the word + tone number (ex: hao2 = háo) you can download a pinyin input method editor called "Pinyinput"

How to type Japanese using all three alphabets

1. Select Japanese from the Language Bar

2. Click "Input Mode" and select "Hiragana"

3. Now you can begin typing hiragana and hit the spacebar once to convert it to kanji, or hit it again to see the scrolling list of kanji

4.  To type katakana, all you have to do is click "Input Mode" and select "Katakana"

 

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

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