Did you know, in India, a country of over 1 billion people, there are 18 major spoken languages and over 1600 regional dialects? Even though Hindi is the official language, many people in India do not speak it at all. Hindi is spoken by about half the population, mostly in North India. Most Indian native languages have their own script.

Some of the major languages are Hindi, English, Oriya, Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Kashmiri, Malayalam, Marathi, Sanskrit, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu.

The situation as it were, if you wanted to type an email or text in any non-English language, you need special software or plug-ins. The following is a list of software which allows you to type in your own native language.

Lipikaar – This is a simple method for typing in Hindi or any of the other 17 major Indian languages, on an ordinary keyboard. It requires no learning, and within a few seconds you will be able to type any word that you can imagine in the language of your choice.

Lipikaar Typing Software is based on a simple assumption – if you can write in your Indian language , then you can type in your language with Lipikaar as well.

It works on all Windows Applications, MS Office, all websites, chat and email. Since it is also provided as a Firefox add-on, it works in Linux as well – albeit within Firefox. For example, the following statement in Hindi has been typed by enabling the Lipikaar Firefox addon.

यह एक आम् हें ।  – Meaning – This is a Mango.

When you type using Lipikaar, it provides helpful hints as an attractive tooltip which is really useful.

LiteType – This is a Free Online Virtual Multilingual & Interactive Keyboard Tool. You can type, search and translate in more than 50 foreign languages,with no need to install any additional software. Some of the functions it features are -

• Change keyboard layouts.
• Search the typed text by using the “Google Search” or the “Wikipedia search” buttons.
• The virtual keyboard displayed on the interface can be fully zoomed.
• Convert typed text into it’s corresponding HTML entities.

Quillpad – Is a free online Indian language typing tool. You can type in Hindi, Gujarati, Punjabi, Marathi, Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, Bengali and Nepali. Quillpad has the ability to transliterate English words that are typed with conventional spellings. The accuracy of text typed is quite amazing. Quill engine can work even with a mobile phone keypad. If you are running a non-profit website, then you can embed their free widget on your site which allows you to type in Indian languages.

Quillpad editor interface

Verdict

Lipikaar is a real joy to use. You can type words as they sound and they are correctly rendered in Unicode. But the down side is that it is a tool predominantly for Indian languages, barring Arabic.

LiteType on the other hand is a purely online based tool and free to use. And it supports a lot more foreign languages, not available in Lipikaar. But  it needs a little getting used to.

Quillpad is also a fabulous tool for typing in many Indian languages. But the free version can be used only on personal or not-for-profit websites. You need a license to use quillpad if you make money from your  website.