How to Type in Other Languages: Add a Keyboard on Any Device

How-To Guides · 3 min read · Published October 25, 2026

Quick answer: to type in another language, add that language's keyboard in your device settings and switch between keyboards with a shortcut: Win+Space on Windows, Control+Space or the 🌐 Globe key on a Mac, and the globe or language key on phones. For just a few accented letters, you don't need another keyboard at all; see accented letters.

Add a keyboard

On Windows, adding a language may also download spelling and speech data; you can add just the keyboard to your existing language if you only need to type.

Layouts vs input methods

• Keyboard layout: each key types one character. Enough for alphabets such as Russian (Cyrillic), Greek, Arabic and Hebrew.
• Input method (IME): extra software for scripts with thousands of characters. You type sounds or parts, and the IME offers matching characters to pick.

Language by language

• Chinese: the Pinyin input method is the most common: type the sound in Latin letters (ni hao), then choose the characters from the candidate list with the number keys or Space. Full guide: how to type in Chinese.
• Japanese: type in rōmaji (konnichiwa), which appears as hiragana; press Space to convert to kanji and Enter to confirm. The IME switches between hiragana, katakana and Latin input. Full guide: how to type in Japanese.
• Korean: the standard 2-set (Dubeolsik) layout puts consonants on the left and vowels on the right; letters automatically combine into syllable blocks as you type. Full guide: how to type in Korean.
• Arabic: a layout, written right to left. Letters change shape automatically depending on their position in the word, so you type each letter once. Full guide: how to type in Arabic.
• Hindi: the standard Devanagari layout (InScript) maps letters to keys; phonetic options also exist, such as transliteration keyboards on phones where you type "namaste" and choose नमस्ते. Full guide: how to type in Hindi.
• Russian: the standard ЙЦУКЕН layout puts Cyrillic letters in fixed positions. Windows also offers a phonetic ("mnemonic") Russian layout where letters sit on similar-sounding Latin keys. Full guide: how to type in Russian.

For Latin-alphabet languages see our dedicated guides: French, Spanish, German, Portuguese, Polish and Turkish, plus Greek.

Tips

• Keep only the keyboards you use; with many installed, the switch shortcut has to cycle through all of them.
• If letters come out wrong after adding a layout, you are probably still on the new keyboard; check the language indicator in the taskbar or menu bar.
• Text in another script needs fonts; if you see boxes, read why symbols show as boxes.

Frequently asked questions