# Arabic keyboard layout



## hadhoud

hi everyone, 
i have a normal keybord that doesnt have arabic. i know that i can download arabic language on to my pc but i dont know where from. some people have told me that i can change the settings from my computer, but its not working. if anyone can help me please tell me. i have tried looking for the arabic cd but i cant seem to find it. 

i thank you in advance.


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## Tariq_Ibn_zyad

You must change the regional settings of your computer,but you need your windows CD to do this otherwise it doesn't work(if you're on windows of course)
When you've done this,you can find stickers with arabic letters to put them on your keybord or just do it yourself on an old keyboard.


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## Jana337

Tariq_Ibn_zyad said:


> You must change the regional settings of your computer,but you need your windows CD to do this otherwise it doesn't work(if you're on windows of course)


A CD is probably needed but regional settings needn't change. One can toggle among multiple keyboard layouts. There's a sticky about it.


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## MarcB

Yes as our colleagues have said you need the disc to download it. Otherwise go here http://www.muftah-alhuruf.com/email.html then copy and paste.


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## J.F. de TROYES

I use the keyboard of this site which is very practical:

http://www.lexilogos.com/

Click on "clavier", then on "arabe": you can key on , copy and paste.


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## Ander

I use it too. You can even type directly from your PC keyboard. But you still have to copy and paste.


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## Anatoli

[Moderator's Note: Merged with a previous thread]
I wonder if anyone had changed the default Arabic keyboard or used Arabic stickers on a Western PC? I always have issues when I tried to type a few sentences in Arabic. A few words is OK but a larger chunk is a problem for me. I am using "Microsoft Visual Keyboard" to see the actual keyboard.

Otherwise, is there a logic you can use to memorise the Arabic keyboard layout?

I tried to download some phonetical keyboards but they didn't seem to work.


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## Josh_

There might be some logic to it, but I don't know what it is.  really, though I would think everyone could make their own logic that can be employed in using the keyboard.  

My only suggestion would be to type as much as possible.  It will eventually come to you.  This is how I ended up learning the keyboard.  I did not systematically learn it, but it just sort of came to me from continued typing in Arabic; mainly through my experiences on this board and typing reports and such for school. I initially wanted to get stickers, but never did.  Now, I don't think I need them know as I just type by rote.


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## Anatoli

Thanks for your answer, Josh. 

I've got a question and some comments. What did you do initially? Did you have a visual keyboard layout in front of you?

Trouble with this approach is - I don't type regularly but when I do, I'd like to put in a larger text.

I find it much easier to type in Chinese, Japanese and Russian than in Arabic, although I don't have stickers:
1) Both Chinese and Japanese can be entered phonetically based on Roman letters.
2) There exists a phonetical replacement for the default Russian/Cyrillic keyboard used in Russia you can use on a Western PC. No need for stickers as most letters match English phonetically, the rest is easy to remember.

I was hoping to find such a driver for Arabic. I also use SC Unipad software, where you can create your own keyboard layout but it has some issues with "laam + alif"and "Allah" ligatures when copying from/to this editor.

EDIT:
I guess, the easiest way to accelerate typing in my situation is to get the keyboard stickers, at least for my home laptop.


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## Whodunit

Anatoli said:


> Thanks for your answer, Josh.


 
Actually, I could post the same as Josh. It was exactly the same with me. 



> I've got a question and some comments. What did you do initially? Did you have a visual keyboard layout in front of you?


 
I used the Microsoft Visual Keyboard and typed as often as possible. I was always going to create a see-throzgh template to lay on my keyboard, but I was too tired of doing handicrafts. 

Some moths ago, I wanted to draw a layout for each of the languages I'm learning. However, since it's too easy D) in Japanese and Chinese, and I got used to Arabic, I don't need it anymore. For Hebrew, Gujarati and things like that I just search for the letters on the keyboard by trying each of the keys. 



> Trouble with this approach is - I don't type regularly but when I do, I'd like to put in a larger text.


 
Routine comes after one or two years, I think. I've never learned to type English or German quickly (ten fingers), but I'd venture to say that I could write as quickly as a secretary who's taken courses to type fast.



> I find it much easier to type in Chinese, Japanese and Russian than in Arabic, although I don't have stickers:
> 1) Both Chinese and Japanese can be entered phonetically based on Roman letters.


 
Yes, that's boring. I've never needed to learn the Chinese characters for haha (哈哈) or ni hao ma? (你好吗？), but only the approximate pronunciation. I also know where some of the kana are on the Japanese keyboard, because I detected the IME tool much later when I had already gotten used to the tradiational Japanese keyboard.



> 2) There exists a phonetical replacement for the default Russian/Cyrillic keyboard used in Russia you can use on a Western PC. No need for stickers as most letters match English phonetically, the rest is easy to remember.


 
Cool, I didn't know that. 



> I was hoping to find such a driver for Arabic. I also use SC Unipad software, where you can create your own keyboard layout but it has some issues with "laam + alif"and "Allah" ligatures when copying from/to this editor.


 
I'm afraid there isn't any. You can use this converter, though.


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## Josh_

Like I said I initially wanted stickers, but I was just to lazy to get them or I'd keep forgetting every time I left the house, so I just printed off a picture of the Arabic keyboard layout and taped it next to my computer.  I still have it there in case I have a complete mental lapse and can't remember where a letter is, but I don't use it too much these days.

For 'Allah' you could just add an extention line (ـ [control] + J) between the second 'laam' and the 'haa' and it will appear as اللـه instead of الله if that would help the formatting issues.


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## MarcB

Anatoli, I use this keyboard similar to Whodunit's. It is better than click keyboards since you can see it and use your real one.I have MSword with variable kb. including Arabic so if I paste it wont print backwards.It works well!


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## Anatoli

Thanks for your advise, all 

MarcB, I heard about muftah-alhuruf before but haven't seen it, thanks! I couldn't understand what you meant by "MSword with variable kb. including Arabic"?


I also us MS Visual Keyboard. It sometimes plays up when you have to work with Excel.  I worked on a vocab list, it is very difficult to use MS VK in Excel as it loses the focus all the time.



> Yes, that's boring.


Whodunit, it's boring but efficient  There are of course, others, more complicated methods of inputting Chinese characters, which I haven't mastered (I use the IME Pad for drawing characters I don't know the reading for  ). Same with Japanese, it's much easier to send an email by typing phonetically without bothering to remember where all the keys are, all you need is to know PINYIN or ROOMAJI  If you need the Cyrillic driver, please let me know.



> For 'Allah' you could just add an extention line (ـ [control] + J) between the second 'laam' and the 'haa' and it will appear as اللـه instead of الله if that would help the formatting issues.


Josh, please explain what application you mean???

Pity, there are not many programmers-enthusiasts willing to make life easier for Arabic learners. There is a huge number of recent enhancements, plug-ins, converters, customised keyboards, etc. freely available for Chinese, Japanese and other language learners.  You may say, Arabic is too hard for such automatic tools but I 've seen excellent commercial text translators.


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## MarcB

Anatoli,
I mean through control panel I added the Arabic keyboard. Before that when I pasted Arabic text to MSword it displayed backwards.


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## Abu Rashid

> Otherwise, is there a logic you can use to memorise the Arabic keyboard layout?



I don't know if there's some kind of logic, but the way I remember it is like this:

s = sin, shin is like sin, so it's next to it, letter 'a' on the keyboard..
g & h in the middle of the keyboard are alef and lam, two of the most typed letters.
l, k & j are meem noon & ta2
Remember that Arabic is right to left, so if you think of it as right to left, it makes more sense.
[, p & o are jim ha2 & kha, 3 similar letters right next to eachother.
u & y are 3ayin & ghayin.
t & r are feh and qaf
w & q are saad and daad
now that just leaves a few stray letters laying around.
kaf is next to meem (ie., the semi-colon key)
ta2 & ba2 are either side of alef and lam (ie. j and f)
tha2 is tucked between qaf and saad

anyway you get the picture it's a big mess, but once you learn it, it's fairly easy. I used to have an Arabic keyboard at one stage, so I got used to it, even though I no longer have it.


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## clevermizo

And of course to make things worse, the default Macintosh Arabic keyboard is a slightly different layout than everyone else's (it has ة where د is, and letters like ى or ؤ are only accessible by shift).

I can type slowly but decently in Arabic now. It just takes practice. If anyone knows of a Typing Tutor-style software for Arabic, please let me know!


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## al-sirbi

Try this software ( FBARAB ).
It has very logical and almost phonetical layout.

http://zsigri.tripod.com/fontboard/fbarab.zip
http://zsigri.tripod.com/fontboard/arabic.html


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## Anatoli

I tried that one before, never got it to work. I wonder if it was tested on Windows XP. Maybe I did something wrong.

Thanks to all again.


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## Josh_

> Josh, please explain what application you mean???


It's the keyboard that comes with Windows XP, but I'm not sure if it comes with other Microsoft operating systems.  

I realized I made a horrible mistake, it should be [Shift]+J, not the control key.  I'm surprised nobody caught that.


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## Anatoli

I did, that's why I asked


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## djara

A very smart Arabic Keyboard at
http://www.yamli.com/arabic-keyboard/

*Moderator note:
Merged with a previous thread. Thanks to all who provided useful links. Next time you have a useful suggestion, please send a PM to the moderators so we can add it to the resources sticky, instead of opening a new thread for suggestions.
Thanks *


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## HBZ55

I remember posting about this. It's by far the best Arabic transliteration tool available, and for Firefox users I recommend using the add-on.


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## Idris

This tool doesn't transliterate Arabic to English? Which tool does that?


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## Muwahid

Almost exactly like http://www.google.com/ta3reeb which personally I prefer. I don't know of any tools to transliterate Arabic to English, I would imagine it would be difficult since while English vowels are present in all words, not so much in Arabic. Therefore there would need to be a huge database of hand transliterate words to reference to.


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## psxws

I think it is extremely benefitial to learn how to type in Arabic. You generally do not need an Arabic keyboard; think about it, the majority of you probably type without ever looking at the keys anyways. You can change the keyboard localization so that it functions essentially like an Arabic keyboard. I used this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:KB_Arabic.svg as a reference for whenever I forgot where a key was, but you'll catch on with time.


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## ÜnLoCo

here is the arabic keyboard that i made
addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/13634

Mohamed, Tunisia


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## djweaverbeaver

[Moderator's Note: Merged with a previous thread]
Hello Everyone,

I loved through the threads, but I haven't seen an answer to the following question.  I was wondering if anyone knew where I could find a good Arabic keyboard cover for PC laptops.  I see that there are different options for Macbooks, but I haven't come across anything for PCs.  Also, I'm looking for something other than the stickers that you put on each key.  Can someone lead me in the right direction? Thank you very much in advance for you help!


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## كلمات

You probably can find these sold in general Islamic stores/bookstores in your state or where there is a big community like Detroit, NYC, etc. Google for online stores. eBay can be of use as well.


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## samuelito.mcf

[Moderator's Note: Merged with a previous thread]
I have recently been trying to learn to type in Arabic, but I've run into some difficulty.  I can't seem to figure out what the "correct layout" would be.  I understand that this would probably be a matter of opinion but I don't want to get used to a certain layout and then have to re-learn if I was ever trying to use someone else's computer that had a different layout.  I got very used to the layout that is on my Iphone.  But on my windows computer there is no similar option... The closest I could find was using the Pashto layout.  But it wasn't exactly the same.  The raa and zayn were switched with daal and dhaal.  So does Apple (mac) just have it's own layout that windows doesn't use?  Which layout would you recommend and are commonly used in your country? Thank you!


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## apricots

Apple has it's own layout. The Arabic (PC) version is the most widely used one.


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## samuelito.mcf

Ok.  So should I not use the Apple layout?  what does the PC stand for?  My Iphone has an alternative option that is supposedly PC but it still doesn't look like any of the options that are on my computer.


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## cherine

Use whichever layout makes you comfortable and that you expect yourself to be using the most. If you use Apple all or most of the time, then keep the layout you have. If you use PC (Windows, or other operation system) then again, use the layout you prefer.


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