Zenon Education Centre

The Greek language, together with many other languages is part of the Windows Operating Systems, however it is not enabled by default. All these languages apart from English need to be enabled for a user to be able to read and write using them in Windows.

Please flick through the steps of this document below in order to enable Greek fonts in your Windows computer.

Alternatively you can download the document and print it to have it next to you when you’re taking these simple steps (NOTE that you need to have Adobe Reader installed in order to open the document once downloaded).

-

Please Login or Register to read the rest of this content.

---

And here is the Greek keyboard (press on the image to enlarge) -

---

For those who have not downloaded a copy of Adobe Reader please read the instructions below

Let’s take enabling Greek language fonts in Windows step by step:

From the (normally green) ‘Start’ button in Windows you need to find the option called ‘Control Panel’ and open it by clicking on it with the left mouse button. Once this window opens it should look something like this –

Or something like this in the classic view –

You will notice an option in this window saying ‘Date, Time, Language, and Regional Options’ or in the Classic view ‘Regional and Language Options’. Click on this option. Then you will be presented by the following new window –

In this new window you will notice three tabs at the top. One is ‘Regional Options’ the second is ‘Language’ and the third ‘Advanced’.

Press on the ‘Language’ tab and you will be presented with a new window which has a button at the top and right that says ‘Details’. Press on the ‘Details’ button and again another window opens that looks like this –

You will notice at the top here under the tab ‘Settings’ and the topic ‘Installed Services’ a button that says ‘Add…’. Press this button and you will again open a new window which should have a pull down menu like this –

This menu under the ‘Input language’ heading has the arrow pointing down on the right side. Click on that arrow and you will see a great list of languages. In there you will find Greek and so select it.

Once you have selected the Greek language it should appear in the previous window like this -

Now press the ‘OK’ button and you’re done!

Windows will now allow you to write in Greek within any of the MS-Office or other programs. In order to invoke the Greek keyboard you will need to change into Greek from the menu that has been created at the bottom of the task bar in the main windows desktop. This menu on the task bar should look something like this –

You will find this selection menu only after you press the blue ‘EN’ button that you see in this picture above. Then all you have to do is select ‘English’ or ‘Greek’ languages to use. After this in MS-Word for instance you will be able to write in Greek with intonations and all the Greek characters on the Greek keyboard.

But I can hear some of you having questions as to where the Greek characters are on the keyboard. Well here is the Greek keyboard layout for your convenience. It will not take you long to remember where each key is but initially have it next to you as you learn the position of each letter on the Greek keyboard.

On this keyboard image you will notice the English letters in gray and the Greek letters in black colors. This is the same keyboard layout for all computers. Remember shift for capitals and no-shift for lower case characters just as it is in English. So start tapping in Greek.

A few additional notes-

• The letter ‘Q’ key in Greek contains the colon and semi-colon characters.
• The letter ‘W’ key in Greek contains the ‘sigma’ at the end of words (τελικό σίγμα).
• The accent (there’s only one in Greek now – monotonic) that goes on top of vowels α, ε, ι, η, υ, ο, ω is achieved by pressing the colon-semicolon keys ( : ; ) on the English keyboard (or the next key to the right of the Lamda character in the Greek keyboard) and then the desired vowel. For example, if we want to put an accent on the letter ‘α’ we first press the colon-semicolon key and second we press the letter ‘α’ in order to achieve this ‘ ά ‘ (without the quotation marks of course).

The rest of the keys are your normal keyboard keys, numbers etc.

You can write a document using two or more languages, but you must understand that in order for the computer to spell check your work you have to install a spell-checker on the system. A spell-checker in Windows XP is almost free, but in Vista or Windows 7 needs to be purchased and installed. Ask your computer supplier if you have Vista or Windows 7.

Hope this will help you and the children to write in Greek.

For the Zenon Education Centre

Iakovos Garivaldis