You can indeed change your keyboard language on the fly. First, however, you need to choose the keyboards that you wish to have available via system preferences/language and text. Once you find language and text button in system preferences, activate it and you will have four tabs there. Select the last one. Move to the right and you will encounter a table of all available language inputs. Interact with the table, and check the checkboxes for the languages you wish to have. These language keyboards should then appear in your text input menu in your menu bar, activated with control f8 shortcut key.
You can change your keyboard layouts via this menu but you could also activate the shortcut key for this under system preferences. The trouble is that the shortcut key for changing your text input clashes with the shortcut keys for activating spotlight search. However, since you can activate spotlight by pressing vo+m 3 times in succession, I have decided to deactivate the spotlight search shortcut keys, command+spacebar for previous input source, and command+shift+spacebar for next input source. To do this, return to your language and text options under system preferences, and there you will find a button 'keyboard shortcuts". Activate it. There you will find two tables. The first one enables you to choose shortcut keys for spotlight. Vo+down arrow in the table until you hear spotlight. Then stop interacting with the table and move to the next table where, after interacting with it, you can uncheck the boxes for the spotlight searches. Then go back to the previous table of shortcut categories and this time vo arrow down to keyboard text input or something like that. Stop interacting and move to the right to interact with the table of available shortcuts. Check the boxes referring to previous and next input keyboard, and double check the key sequences by moving to the right hand side column where you will hear the command+spacebar and command option spacebar for the next input source. Then you are done. Now each time you press these keyboard shortcuts, voiceover will announce "new keyboard layout so and so". Note that the previous keyboard layout shortcut command+space, moves you between the two recently used keyboards. So if you have 3, for instance, British, German and French, but recently, you used French, it will give you French layout. While in French, if you press the same command again, it will take you back to your British layout. If you do it again, it will give you French again. If you want German, you will have to use the next keyboard shortcut command option spacebar to hear your keyboard as you file past them. Occasionally, Voiceover stopped announcing new keyboard layout for some unknown reason and I had to restart my computer but that doesn't happen often and I use these shortcut keys all the time. As for spellchecking in other languages, I have never tried it. I didn't think it was possible. Hope this helps. Best wishes Simon On 7 Dec 2011, at 00:50, Rachel Magario wrote: > Thanks Anne. Idid that, but it does not seem to work! > Do you change your keyboard layout when you start writing in a different > language? Cause I usually just leave it on my us english keyboard. > I don't know how to change the key board lay out in the fly on the macbook > only on the iPhone and have not gone explore to investigate how. > Thanks again! > Rachel. > On Dec 6, 2011, at 4:29 PM, Anne Robertson wrote: > >> Hello Rachel, >> >> For me, the Mac detects the language without me having to do anything. In >> System Preferences, in the Language&Text pane, under Text, I have it set to >> Automatic by language. >> >> Cheers, >> >> Anne >> >> >> On 6 Dec 2011, at 05:24, Rachel Magario wrote: >> >>> This question is for Anne, but anyone who might know the answer, please! >>> How do I do automatic spell check for a different languages. Sometimes when >>> I am in mail I need to answer email in different languages, but it keeps >>> spell checking in english. Help lease. >>> Rachel. >>> >>> -- >>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >>> "MacVisionaries" group. >>> To post to this group, send email to macvisionaries@googlegroups.com. >>> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to >>> macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. >>> For more options, visit this group at >>> http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en. >>> >> >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "MacVisionaries" group. >> To post to this group, send email to macvisionaries@googlegroups.com. >> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to >> macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. >> For more options, visit this group at >> http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en. >> > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "MacVisionaries" group. > To post to this group, send email to macvisionaries@googlegroups.com. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. To post to this group, send email to macvisionaries@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en.
