Friday, December 22, 2006

Thai Typing Resources

All of my Skype language exchanges have involved text instant messaging (IM) as well as voice chat.

I've been able to participate a little in Thai text IM by copy-pasting text from this tool and online dictionaries, but that's obviously very limited. So I now have another reason to learn to type Thai. Lleij Samuel Schwartz mentioned in a comment that a Thai keyboard helps a lot. I found a Thai keyboard in our house, but the cable is PS2, and my PC only accepts USB.

If I'm motivated, having no keyboard may be a good thing, since it will force me to learn touch-typing. Even so, I will need a USB keyboard for the long run.

I did find some resources online.

1. Set-up instructions for non-English typing.
2. A Thai typing tutor.
3. Thai keyboards for sale. I haven't ordered one yet.

Update: I solved my keyboard problem by buying a PS2/USB adapter. Even before attaching the Thai keyboard, I used this image of the Kedmanee keyboard layout along with these mnemonics, and typing didn't look like a lost cause. I'm a decent touch typist in English, which may help. I'm now practicing with this useful list of common phrases. Fortunately, you don't have to type very quickly in an IM session.

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5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Scott,

An other typing ressource would be a virtual Thai keyboard.

MOG Software proposes uniKode for Thai which is a freeware virtual Thai keyboard that may works directly with most XP softwares like Word, MSN, Skype or ICQ.

It's available on:

http://mog.software.free.fr <--Virtual Thai Keyboard

Scott Imig said...

I just installed it and tried it out.

Nice!

Thanks for the information.

Piceth said...

I'm actually learning how to touch type thai as well, although I'm thai myself. The prob is that i was educated in an international school all my life and was forced to learn how to touch type only English.

I'm struggling but with persistence I'll touch type thai someday!

Scott Imig said...

Hi, Ice,

Thanks for stopping by!

I think if you can already touch type in English and spell in Thai, typing in Thai won't be very difficult to learn. :)

Unknown said...

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