4.3 How to type German and Spanish characters

2023-02

Now, I am learning Español(Spanish) and Deutsch(German). There are many special characters in these two languages, like accents and umlauts. So I spent a little time to find out how to type these characters on all my computers, and below are what I’ve gotten.

4.3.1 Windows

I use Windows 11. First I setup the keyboard layout to use my right Alt key as a Alt Gr key:

Start -> Settings -> Time & Language -> Language -> Preferred Language -> Click on "English" (click "add a language" if there’s no English in the list) -> Click "Options" on the "English" item -> Click "Add a keyboard" then select United States - International.

After I’ve done that, I got an ENG-INTL input method. By switching to this input method, I can do:

• To insert ß, press RAlt+s

• For umlauts, e.g. ü, press " u

• For accents, e.g. á, press ' a

• For ñ, press Shift+​ n

• For ¿, press RAlt+/

• For ¡, press RAlt+1

• For ’, ", and ~, press the corresponding key then press Space

4.3.2 Linux

Run setxkbmap -layout us -option compose:ralt to set the Right Alt key as the compose key, then:

• To insert ß, press RAlt s s

• For umlauts, e.g. ü, press RAlt " u or RAlt+" u

• For accents, e.g. á, press RAlt ' a or RAlt+' a

• For ñ, press RAlt Shift+~ n or RAlt+Shift+~ n

• For ¿, press RAlt ? ?

• For ¡, press RAlt ! !

4.3.3 macOS

• To insert ß, press Option+s

• For umlauts, e.g. ä, press Option+u a

• For accents, e.g. á, press Option+e a

• For ñ, press Option+n n

• For ¿, press Option+?, i.e. Option+Shift+/

• For ¡, press Option+1