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Typing Foreign Characters on your Keyboard
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For those of you using Microsoft Word, and other Windows based word processing packages, you can type all those funny accents that are used in Spanish, French and German, on your keyboard.

Foreign Characters

The following steps are needed to type foreign characters

(1) Press the key sequence to identify the required Accent.
(2) Release the accent keys simultaneously.
(3) Press the letter for the key you require accented.(Press the shift key and the letter if an upper case accented character is required).
(4) Don't type the + where you see a + below!

Acute
Ctrl+’
(á Á, é É, í Í, ó Ó, ú Ú ð Ð)

1. Hold down the Ctrl key then press the Apostrophe key.

2. Release both keys simultaneously.

3. Type the appropriate letter a, e, i, o, u, d

Circumflex
Ctrl+^
(â Â, ê Ê, î Î, ô Ô, û Û)

1. Hold down the Ctrl key then press the Caret key(Shift 6)

2. Release all keys simultaneously.

3. Type the appropriate letter a, e, i, o, u

Grave
Ctrl+`
(à À; è È, ì Ì, ò Ò, ù Ù)

1 Hold down the Ctrl key then press the Grave key (to the left of the digit 1)

2 Release both keys simultaneously.

3 Type the appropriate letter a, e, i, o, u

Tilde
Ctrl+~
(ã Ã, ñ Ñ, õ Õ)

1. Hold down the Ctrl key then press Tilde key (Shift #)

2. Release all keys simultaneously.

3. Type the appropriate letter a, n, o

Umlaut
Ctrl+:
(ä Ä, ë Ë, ï Ï, ö Ö, ü Ü, ÿ Ÿ)

1. Hold down the Ctrl key then press the Colon key(Shift ;)

2. Release all keys simultaneously.

3. Type the appropriate letter a, e, i, o, u, y

Dipthong /Ess-tsett
Ctrl +&
(æ Æ, œ Œ, ß)

1. Hold down the Ctrl key then press the Ampersand key(Shift 7)

2. Release all keys simultaneously.

3. Type the appropriate letter a, o, s (Ess tsett lower case s only)

Cedilla
Ctrl+,
(ç Ç)

1. Hold down the Ctrl key then press the Comma key

2. Release both keys simultaneously.

3. Type the appropriate letter c.

Slash
Ctrl+/
(ø Ø)

1. Hold down the Ctrl key then press the Forward Slash key

2. Release both keys simultaneously.

3. Type the appropriate letter o.

Upside down Question mark
Alt+Ctrl+Shift+?
(¿)

This is achieved with a single key combination.

Hold down the Ctrl Alt Shift keys at the same time, then press the Question mark key

Upside down Exclamation mark
Alt+Ctrl+Shift+!
(¡)

This is achieved with a single key combination.

Hold down the Ctrl Alt Shift keys, all at the same time, then press the Exclamation mark key.

These are 'standard' Microsoft keystrokes, and is exactly what we use in the 200 Words a Day courses.

During testing expressions and questions (e.g. ¡adelante! or ¿cómo?) must have the correct characters ¡ ! ¿ ? to get full points on the scoring.

Omitting them will cause you to drop points. So it is quite important to learn these keystrokes for the course, but also for your general language skills.

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Typing Foreign Characters on your Keyboard using the ALT keys
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Alternatively there are standard ALT keystrokes that can achieve the same result.

Hold down the ALT key and then type the numbers on the NUMERIC keypad.

That is the little keypad with the numbers, on the right of the keyboard. It usually will not work with the numbers above the QWERTY keys.

Alt key + ... (follow link for more examples)

129 ü
130 é
132 ä
137 ë
139 ï
142 Ä
144 É
153 Ö
154 Ü
160 á
161 í
162 ó
163 ú
164 ñ
165 Ñ
167 º
168 ¿
173 ¡
248 °

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Work Advanced
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Work is Advanced on the following courses - Welsh 1. Howard Edwards at Popeth Cymraeg is working on the Beta version, and doing another edit of the first 1,000 words of Welsh. - Expect a late May/early June release.

French 2 is almost ready for release - another 14 days or so. Just beta-testing now.

Spanish Understanding Por & Para: This course is one for Intermediate learners to help understand the situations where you would use the word 'por' and when to use 'para'. You'll also have lots of sentence-building practice while using the hundreds of different examples of words using these two tricky little words. You'll cover the subtle differences that a sentence takes when 'por' is swapped for 'para', and vice versa.

There are hundreds of common expressions and phrases included - para varaiar, por supuesto, por consiguiente, por lo general etc - Expect a late April-May release.

German 2 - expect a June release.

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Spanish Tip
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To steal or to rob in Spanish is 'robar', which is pretty easy to remember as it sounds like ROBBER!

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French Tip -
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To steal in French is 'voler' which also means to fly. It sounds like VOLLAY, so you can remember it by imagining a flying thief steals a VOLLEY-ball.

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German Tip -
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The German for to steal is stehlen, or to rob is berauben (to rob a person), or ausrauben ( to rob a bank, safe etc). Remember stehlen by imagining someone steaking STALE AN' mouldy bread; and berauben by a BEE in A ROBE IN the street robbing a person.

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200 Words a Day CD-Rom to give away each month
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This edition our winner is Tabir in Indonesia. Last month's 3 winners were from USA, New Zealand and Romania respectively.

To enter the monthly draw for a CD-Rom of your choice, click on the link Enter the Draw.

You'll need to answer some easy questions (we even give you the answers...!).

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Spanish Pic - Browned off being Marooned!
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This newsletter pic is marrón, which is the word for brown, as in the color brown.

Here our character is not only getting BROWN, he's feeling BROWNED off being MAROONED on a desert island . . .

Don't forget to enrol for the monthly competition and be in for the draw to win a CD-Rom of your choice.

Enter the Draw for a 200 Words a Day! CD-Rom of your Choice.

That is it for this newsletter. See you next time.

Hasta la vista...À bientôt...Bis bald.

Kevin Crocombe & the 200 Words a Day Team
www.200words-a-day.com
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The Team
Tom White; Odette; Nigel; Dominic; Caroline Giraud; Albin Vidal; Maud Wojcik; Germain Tottet; Mariana Averza; Julia Watson; Eduardo Aceto; Maria Llorente; Chris White; Alan White, Sandrine Benoit, Welsh: Ioan Telfryn, Howard Edwards.

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School Programmes are available worldwide. Words in our courses cover the syllabus in most English-speaking countries.

UK Schools qualify for e-Learning Credits.

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Trade enquiries are welcome.

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200 Words a Day!
32 Alverton, Great Linford, Milton Keynes, Bucks, MK14 5EF, United Kingdom.
Tel: (+44) 1908 676 873