Change input language independently from keyboard layout?

[Christian Flury]

Hello everybody,

I have done some research and I have seen this issue or similar problems come up a few times, but never found a good solution. The issue has sometimes been dismissed as a minority problem, but I don't think it is, at least not here in Western and Central Europe.

I am running Android 4.1.2 on a Samsung Galaxy Junior.

My question basically is: Is there a way to untie the input language (for autocomplete suggestions and spellcheck) from the keyboard layout of the touchscreen keyboard?

This has been standard on desktop computers for ages. For example, in my case, I regularly communicate in German, English, French and Italian. On any desktop OS I can just switch the language of the spellchecker depending on the language I am currently using – but I would never dream of changing the keyboard layout. I would venture to say that this is the case of most speakers of a language other than English, but written with a Latin script who work in an international setting: They will use the English language a lot in their written communication, but they will be used to typing in English with their local keyboard layout. (In OS X and Ubuntu at least, I can even type traditional Chinese characters in pinyin input mode while still using the German keyboard layout.)

This is very easy to set up in iOS, but I have spent hours to get Android to behave this way – to no avail. It seems that the keyboard layout and the input language are tied together which appears very illogical to me. Am I just missing something very basic?

Many thanks in advance for any suggestions or pointers!

Chris

 

[RumoredNow]

Have you looked into a custom keyboard rather than the default one?

https://forums.androidcentral.com/e...search?q=german+keyboard&hl=en&token=1QrxkLU-

Then you can make the new keyboard the default...

 

[Christian Flury]

Thanks a lot, I'll try that - although none of them mentions that feature in the description which makes me afraid it won't solve the problem... I'll come back here in case it does not work out.

 

[Christian Flury]

Thanks again, my first try - the new beta version of MultiLing (https://forums.androidcentral.com/e...pps/details?id=kl.ime.oh&hl=en&token=ru6B42YR) - works like a charm. As any app that offers the user such an abundance of options the set-up process may seem a bit complicated at first, but afterwards it does exactly what I wanted - QWERTZ layout for all languages with Latin scripts, support for East-Asian languages... you name it. Perfect!

Strange that they do not advertise that additional feature (independence of keyboard layout from language selection) that may be quite important to many users as explained above. EDIT: They do advertise it, actually...

Thanks!