SHABDKOSH

Hi,

How easy is it to type Gujarati text on the web?

Thanks,

Santhosh

First things first:
a) do you already speak, or have a basic knowledge of, Gujarati?
or (b), are you planning to learn Gujarati and want to write from the start?

If (a), then you need to learn the basic Devanagari layout on a ‘qwerty’ keyboard. Gujarati is one of the languages that use an adapted form of the Sanskrit or Prakrit alphabet: others include Hindi, Punjabi, Nepali, Bengali, etc. Once you have learned the basic layout, you can apply to any of these languages.

ગુજરાતી “Gujratii” is the result if you type the following on the ‘qwerty’  keyboard: i-g-j-e-l-r. Obviously, this bears no resemblance to the Gujarati, but that is how the Devanagari letters are mapped to the ASCII codes.

The font: if you are using Windows, all these Indian fonts are available, already built in to the system. Accessing them can be a bit of a nightmare, but it is possible. I have over 35 different fonts I regularly use, from Hindi, to Korean, Arabic, Chinese, and Thai. I am planning to put an open-source web page on-line soon to help all those budding linguists. Till then, contact me at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) and I shall try and help you.

An interesting site is the following also: http://www.omniglot.com/ (I think!) contact me and I can give you more details.

Easier way is, just go to

http://www.google.com/transliterate/

select Gujarati from the drop down list there, and start typing as you would type in English. It will automatically convert your text to Gujarati. Typing with this system is much much easier as compared to typing on the keyboard, as you don’t have to learn a new system and memorize new keyboard layout. You also don’t need to install any fonts for this.

Like typing Gujarati automatically converts to ગુજરાતી. You can then copy paste this text wherever you want (which ever places support unicode characters, and currently most of them do)