Thread: Cyrilic letters with accents

I have a great problem. Recently I have had to change my PC, changing from one with Windows XP to other with Windows 7. I have a lot of work done in Russian, in Word, with letters stressed (и, я, ю). To get them in XP i went to "include symbols" in the section of "cyrillic" of every font and voila!. But in Windows 7 I have searched in a lot of fonts and I find in "cyrillic" section of every font the most curious symbols, but none of stressed cyrillic letters. And all my documents previously well (accented) written appear now full of strange symbols.

Can somebody help me? Thanks

Originally Posted by radomir

I have a great problem. Recently I have had to change my PC, changing from one with Windows XP to other with Windows 7. I have a lot of work done in Russian, in Word, with letters stressed (и, я, ю). To get them in XP i went to "include symbols" in the section of "cyrillic" of every font and voila!. But in Windows 7 I have searched in a lot of fonts and I find in "cyrillic" section of every font the most curious symbols, but none of stressed cyrillic letters. And all my documents previously well (accented) written appear now full of strange symbols.

Can somebody help me? Thanks

It is sad. really.
Which version of Word do you use? Maybe you can solve this issue by install old version Word (which was installed with Win XP).

Or other way = when I have trouble with Win Word I use OpenOffice. OpenOffice is free.

Radomir, you actually got further with this than I ever did, despite me being an IT professional etc. I agree that it would be tremendously helpful to be able to easily type Russian vowels with an accent.

There have been several threads about this and I can't remember that any actually offered any good advice. Most people have given up and do things like make the stressed vowel bold instead, or a different colour.

Obviously the Russians don't normally know either, since they have no reason to want to put accents when typing in Russian...
This problem is specific for people who are learning Russian with a starting point in a language with Latin letters.
I guess you are in a better starting position than many others though, since you are more used to accents from Spanish.

Can you explain exactly what settings you changed in XP? What did you then do, to get the accented vowels when typing in Russian? Do you type with the Cyrillic keyboard enabled, or how?

Did you change something in XP itself, or in Microsoft Word? If it was in Word, what version do you use?If we know exactly how you got this working in XP, then we have a better chance of figuring it out for Windows 7.

I've had Win7 for as long as I've studied Russian and I would really like to get this working too.
As for Word: It's relatively unlikely that they removed this functionality, they probably just moved it somewhere else.

I don't remember which version of Microsoft Office I was using. The present, preinstaled in the PC is Microsoft Office 2010 Starter, including Word and Excel. I can uninstall this Office and install Microsoft Office 2007 that I have in complete version. But will I find again the same problem I have with 2010? Who knows?

The version if Office that I had working was previous to 2007.

Originally Posted by radomir

I don't remember which version of Microsoft Office I was using. The present, preinstaled in the PC is Microsoft Office 2010 Starter, including Word and Excel. I can uninstall this Office and install Microsoft Office 2007 that I have in complete version. But will I find again the same problem I have with 2010? Who knows?

Sorry, but I don't know in this case.
You afraid of losing a license for Win Office 2010?
Maybe you try OpenOffice (with Russian location). if this will not work = you can change version or settings of Win Office. you can install OpenOffice with Win Office in one PC, this is not a problem. If this will not work just remove this soft.
I think this is the fastest way for resolving problem. If you used special symbols or macroses = this may be a trouble.

P.S. in my opinion = better full Win Office 2007 than base preinstalled Win Office 2010

Something I've been meaning to look into is the Canadian multilingual keyboard, that has a lot of accent possibilities,
Keyboard layout - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
.Lots of shift key methods to put accents on letters.

Originally Posted by radomir

I have a great problem. Recently I have had to change my PC, changing from one with Windows XP to other with Windows 7. I have a lot of work done in Russian, in Word, with letters stressed (и, я, ю). To get them in XP i went to "include symbols" in the section of "cyrillic" of every font and voila!. But in Windows 7 I have searched in a lot of fonts and I find in "cyrillic" section of every font the most curious symbols, but none of stressed cyrillic letters. And all my documents previously well (accented) written appear now full of strange symbols.

Can somebody help me? Thanks

I don't think any standard font has accented Russian letters. You probably used a customized font. In this case you have to install that font on the new computer.

Would you copy some of those curious symbols and paste them to this forum?

This works for me XP/Word2000:

Use Unicode's built-in overstrike diacritics. Windows Word97 and 2000
(and I imagine for the Mac as well) give you access to a great many Unicode
overstrike characters. (Look under Insert Symbol and then scroll through the
symbols until you get to the "combining diacritical mark" set). You can
automate the process by assigning a keystroke to each diacrtical. PLUSSES
(a) You need no extra fonts. (b) I imagine it's doable on the Mac - at least
in later versions of Word. (c) It should print on all printers. (d) It
looks pretty on the screen. MINUS (and for me a big one): It causes Russian
spellcheckers to flag any accented word.

Type дорого
then your macro key (I assigned ctrl+' for the accent.
then the й.
It doesn't work in MR's data entry screen.

My friend says to me that Office 2007 has the same fonts as Office 2010. I have seen every font in my PC and I haven't found these letters. I didn't do nothing before, simply searched and found as an extra in every font these letters и, я, ю, ы with an orthographical accent. I will say to the technician who monted the PC and installed the software to install the Office being in the, by now, dead PC with XP. I wish he could bring to life the PC for both happiness (that of PC and mine ). He is on holidays till end of month. Thank you

Here is a sample of what I have written with the help of these symbols:
(Perhaps a solution could be to copy these accented letters in a file and go to this file and copy-paste these letters in the document in work. I will see). I see a little difference between "go to symbols" and to go to "accented vowels" and copy-paste (on other hand I have no other way out).


hospital больни́ца
explosión взры́в r
hacer explotar взрыва́ть - взорва́ть
posible возмо́жный (-ая, -ое)
tiempo; actualmente вре́мя: в настоя́щее вре́мя
de alto rango високопоста́вленный (-ая, -ое)
director глава́ dr
ciudadano (s) граждани́н (гаражда́нка, гра́ждане)
datos; según да́нные: пода́нным (pl)
asunto де́ло rd
víctima; baja же́ртва
Mº del Interior МВД
(Министе́рство Вну́тренних Де́л)
potencia мо́щность ж
permanecer, continuar оста/ва́ться - оста́ться

That's exactly what I wanted to do on my Russian flashcards, and in general.
I literally spent hours trying to figure out how to do it, but eventually I gave up - something I almost never do with computers.

I'll check Chaikas advice later. I never checked for this specifically with Unicode, so that could be it. Maybe that's the secret.

There's got to be some way to do it, because accents are used in lots of Russian text books for students.

Originally Posted by radomir

больни́ца

This is what chaika advised. Combining diacritic symbols. The accented и́ consists of two unicode characters: "cyrillic small leteer i" and "combining acute accent" (U+301). I am surprised that Office 2010 Starter can't handle it. You can try OpenOffice instead.

If anyone ever gets this working, please let us know. The accent marks help me out in learning IMMENSELY. And I would be a happy first customer; I'm sure I'm not the only one.

Any unicode font has this Acute Accent character (Unicode U+0301)
You can put a keyboard shortcut for this character in MS Word or use Insert symbol option. It's a combining diactic character that is added after any character you need.
You can also have charmap.exe (located in your Windows\System32 folder) to insert this symbol to any other application you're working with.

What I finally am doing is to copy a line with и, ы, ю, я accented to the head of every document in which I am working to avoid continuous help to other file, and I copy-paste these characters whenever I need them. I finish the work, I delete this "help-line" and voila! I can't get the no doubt more elegant solutions given here. Thanks.

Copy the acute accent character in the clipboard and paste it after the letters you want to put accent onto.

Dear Ramil, if I do what you say I get и' , я' , ю' and so on.
Looking here and there I have found Kodeks where a file is announced including every font, and of course these letters accented. I have download it and really there appears a lot of letters and signs (in Unicode) but none of these letters accented.
Sorry.

Originally Posted by Полуношник

This is what chaika advised. Combining diacritic symbols. The accented и́ consists of two unicode characters: "cyrillic small leteer i" and "combining acute accent" (U+301). I am surprised that Office 2010 Starter can't handle it. You can try OpenOffice instead.

No doubt I didn't understand what you have said.
A letter is written, then one goes to "insert Symbol", chooses Unicode and types in the field 0301. I don't know if with 301 it will work the same. In any case the problem is solved. Thank you very much.

Originally Posted by radomir

Dear Ramil, if I do what you say I get и' , я' , ю' and so on.
Looking here and there I have found Kodeks where a file is announced including every font, and of course these letters accented. I have download it and really there appears a lot of letters and signs (in Unicode) but none of these letters accented.
Sorry.

That's strange, works as charm on my system.