Microsoft has announced that it is adding smart phonetic Indic keyboards for Windows in 10 different Indian languages. The new keyboards will be added with May 2019 update (19H1) for Windows 10.
The company says that the phonetic Indic keyboards learns from the behaviour patterns and preferences of the user and accordingly offers individualized word suggestions in Indian languages. The keyboards will be available in Hindi, Bangla, Tamil, Marathi, Punjabi, Gujarati, Odia, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam languages. The brand says that the keyboard uses transliteration, instead of translation. This means that users can simply type the words and it will be transliterated to the choice of Indian language.
For instance, if we type ‘Bharat’ in Latin characters, the Phonetic keyboard will transliterate final output to à¤à¤¾à¤°à¤¤ (Hindi), à¦à¦¾à¦°à¦¤ (Bengali), àªàª¾àª°àª¤ (Gujarati) or à¨à¨¾à¨°à¨¤ (Punjabi) depending on the target language. Prior to this, users need to download Microsoft Indic Language Input Tool (ILIT) from the company’s community website, Bhashindia.com or from third-party websites. However, with the latest update, it is now integrated into the operating system, thus eliminating the need to install any external tools.
Users who have not updated their operating system may get the latest update by going to Settings> Updates & Security> Windows Update. Once the update is installted, one can active phonetic keyboards by simply going to Language settings options. The company says that the new phonetic keyboard layouts will work with any Unicode enabled applications and web browsers (including Edge) running over the Windows 10 operating system.