Foreign Language Characters and Accents with GAFE

Google provides a variety of tools for incorporating foreign language characters and accents, which are useful for students studying world languages, and especially handy for teachers seeking to support English language learners and communicating with families that do not speak English as a first language.

Insert Special Characters

You can access a library of foreign and other special characters directly within Google Docs and Slides:

1. Click Insert
2. Click Special Characters
3. Choose Latin (for Spanish or French) from the drop down menu.  Many, many other scripts are also available.  You can also search for any symbol by keyword.
4. Click to insert a symbol directly into your document or presentation.

If you want to search for a symbol but can’t remember its name, you can draw the symbol, and if Google recognized it based on your drawing, the symbol will display.  Watch this video for a demonstration of the Draw a Symbol feature.

Add Keyboard Layouts on a Chromebook

1. Click on the Chrome menu (3 horizontal bars in the Chrome toolbar)
2. Click Settings
3. Under Device, click Keyboard Settings
4. Click Change Language and Input Settings
5. Click Add
6. Choose the language you need from the dropdown menu.

Switching Keyboards

Once you have set up the languages and keyboard layouts you prefer, you can click on the bottom-right system tray in order to switch between them. You can also move between your preferred keyboard layouts by using Alt-Shift to switch between your keyboard layouts or by using Ctrl-Space to go to your last layout.

Google Input Tools Chrome Extension

Install Google Input Tools to your Chrome browser for easy access to characters and symbols in over 70 languages. Google Input Tools allow you to insert foreign characters in Google Docs, Slides and other apps, and also anywhere on the web where you can enter input (ie, social networks, order forms, etc.)