Unwanted foreign diacritical marks when typing (Samsung default keyboard)

[Dark Penguin]

Sometimes I text or post in German, so I love the fact that I can long press the a, o, or u keys to **optionally** get a menu of diacritical marks for the umlauts. This is much easier than using a hardware keyboard with a PC and remembering the needed keyboard shortcuts. In fact, the ALT sequences I find via Google don't even work anymore, at least not on my Surface tablet.

However!

Having used an old phone stuck on v9 and recently replaced it with a new one on v13, since updated to v14, I now find I'm getting foreign alphabet letters randomly and without any long pressing, e.g. č̣, ę, ẓ̌, ć, etc. And I'm using the English keyboard.

Why is this happening? Is there now some ridiculous and bizarre protocol where I have to pull my fingers or thumbs off the key at exactly the right angle and velocity to get plain English letters?

 

[SpookDroid]

Unfortunately there's no way to edit these unless you use a keyboard that either allows for selection of these extended characters or limits them to the 'standard' ones for the language pack selected.

If the issue is that you're getting these characters accidentally (i.e. not by long-pressing the letter to select one), then you can try to either disable swipe-to-type or to increase the delay for touch and hold.

 

[Laura Knotek]

Which keyboard app are you using? Have you tried using a different keyboard app?

 

[B. Diddy]

Is the keyboard language specifically "English (US)"? There are usually a number of different English options, and each one might have different special characters that are available.

 

[Dark Penguin]

Which keyboard app are you using? Have you tried using a different keyboard app?

Just the default, i.e. what the phone had out of the . The space bar is labeled "English (US)".

I'm willing to try other apps, but I still need to be able to long press for umlauts when needed. There are German keyboard options that have three extra keys for ä, ö, and ü, no long press or context menu needed, but on those the entire keyboard is different and it really throws me off.

 

[Laura Knotek]

Just the default, i.e. what the phone had out of the . The space bar is labeled "English (US)".

I'm willing to try other apps, but I still need to be able to long press for umlauts when needed. There are German keyboard options that have three extra keys for ä, ö, and ü, no long press or context menu needed, but on those the entire keyboard is different and it really throws me off.

I like Gboard and Microsoft SwiftKey. I know those have German.

 

[SpookDroid]

Just curious though... Is the issue that when you long-press a key you get TOO MANY additional characters? Or is the issue that these 'randomly' appear as you type? If it's the latter, I think your best bet is my other solution: either disable swipe or try increasing the touch and hold delay (a short delay may be what's causing it).