Thread: How do Russians and others normally switch between Latin and non-Latin keyboards?

Interesting explanation, thanks! Yes, I have noticed the super awkward position of comma on the Russian keyboard. That must be irritating absolutely everyone. Can't imagine who agreed that it should be placed there.

I agree that the fact that English has so few letters and no accents or umlauts complicates! It's not quite as tricky in Swedish as in Russian, but we have 3 more letters than English, and need to use accents more. So ; : and - require pressing shift, and [ ] @ € require pressing ctrl+alt too! I think the situation is similar for German and French too.

Impressive that you used a Yamaha in the mid 1980s! Was it at home or for some other reason?
I noticed that for the Yamaha they put the English letters at the same place as the equivalent sound in English. I.e. a completely different position than QWERTY. This isn't still done, is it? When I first took up Russian, I read that there is actually an alternative Russian keyboard layout, which puts the Russian letters at positions that matches the English sounds, i.e. a kind of Russian QWERTY. But the book recommended against using this layout since it is unusual.

I remember using a model in school, during the mid 80s. Unbelievably (as it seems today) it was manufactured in Sweden by a state owned company. It had a wider keyboard with more keys to acommodate all keys in a comfortable position, as well as Swedish words on the keys for delete and print screen etc. The spec was probably super low, but it could be programmed in Pascal... Of course, local manufacturing of computers did not stand a chance against competition from globalisation, so it never took off but it made me interested in computers and learning more.

Originally Posted by Hanna

Impressive that you used a Yamaha in the mid 1980s! Was it at home or for some other reason?

Yamaha was the most widespread personal computer in the USSR in the mid-80s. It was everywhere: in the schools, in youth creativity centers, in young pioneer houses etc. I think you could not buy it for home at the time or it was too expensive (like a half of a car). There were less expensive Soviet-made computers for home use which were more affordable.

I started programming at 8 years (2nd grade) at a programming group at creativity center. The group was free as anything in the USSR. Besides Yamahas there were also Toshibas there, and other groups were equipped with Soviet computers. My school was also equipped with Yamahas but the informatics subject only started from 6th grade (although as the teacher was informed that I attended a group, she allowed me to program and play games after lessons).

Originally Posted by Hanna

I noticed that for the Yamaha they put the English letters at the same place as the equivalent sound in English. I.e. a completely different position than QWERTY. This isn't still done, is it? When I first took up Russian, I read that there is actually an alternative Russian keyboard layout, which puts the Russian letters at positions that matches the English sounds, i.e. a kind of Russian QWERTY. But the book recommended against using this layout since it is unusual.

It was a Soviet standard. All computers, both imported and domestically produced were required to follow it.
The IBM PC-compatible computers that emerged in mid-1990s did not respect any Soviet standards.