I am currently using the Anki software to learn some vocabulary. As my reading and writing abilities are not very well yet (just startet to learn the first letters) I am still dependend on transliteration. My language school uses a transliteration system very near that of "Thai for Beginners". Filling my vocabulary with words I am facing the problem that I don't know how to type in some special characters used in the transliteration system like

- two mirrored "c" with a connecting circumflex above (like cc^)

- an epsilon with an accent grave above (like E` ὲ)

Is there an easy and fast way to type these character or combinations in?

You should be able to find a "map of characters" in "All Programs" > "Accessories" > "System Utilities"

Selecting the font you are using you can see all the symbols allowed and selecting the one you need in

the low right corner a key combination will be showed and it's the one that allow you to introduce that

symbol. I know, not really easy to use, but it's the only way I know. Alternatively you can leavo opened

in background the map of characters and copy&paste them.

I know that tool but it does not fit my requirements. For example I can put in one or two of the "mirrored" c letters from the character map and also a circumflex but than the circumflex will be after the two letters and not above. So I cannot combine the characters.

The combining diacritics are found in the "Combining Diacritical Marks" block of Unicode, which comes after the IPA block. I recommend SIL's free CharisSIL font for anything involving IPA or the extended Latin character blocks.

Windows' Character Map isn't sufficient for my needs, so I use the excellent free program BabelMap. I use it every day.

However, if you only have Character Map at your disposal, you can set the character set to "Unicode" and search for "combining circumflex" in the search box (be sure to check the box for "advanced view").

You can also search for "open o" (for ɔ), "open e" (for ɛ), "schwa" (for ə), "eng" (for ŋ), etc.

For the various accent marks, try "combining circumflex", "combining caron", "combining grave" and "combining acute".

For the various accent marks, try "combining circumflex", "combining caron", "combining grave" and "combining acute".

The combination sumarised as 'cc^' sounds like the three-character sequence <U+0254 LATIN SMALL LETTER OPEN O, U+1DCD COMBINING DOUBLE CIRCUMFLEX ABOVE, U+0254>. Only fonts released this year should contain it, for it was only added to Unicode this year, in Version 5.1.

These 'double diacritics' are rather thin on the ground. There's a combining double macron, but for other tone marks (acute, grave and caron), I think there are no defined characters. Do you have examples of them with pairs of vowels? Linguists tend not to use them, as they put a type of colon (ideally U+02D0 MODIFIER LETTER TRIANGULAR COLON, but Internet Explorer used to mess it up) after the single vowel to indicate a long vowel. Word has the ADVANCE field code for nudging characters into the right place.

Thank you both for your answers. The BabelMap seems to be an interesting tool for me. Anyways I do not know how to combine the characters with it. E.g. I know how to find the "OPEN E" and the "COMBINING CIRCUMFLEX", but BabelMap then puts the two characters next to each others instead of combining both to one open e with a circumflex above.

@ Richard: E.g. elephant ช้าง in my transliteration system is cháang so with a long aa and high tone. As the long aa is high (and not only the first or the last a) I would prefer putting the tone mark above both aa.

E.g. elephant ช้าง in my transliteration system is cháang so with a long aa and high tone. As the long aa is high (and not only the first or the last a) I would prefer putting the tone mark above both aa.

I feel the same way. But do you have printed examples of it being done?

I think (!) the book my language school gave me uses it. But I am not sure. Will have a look at it.

Anyways a circumflex (grave,...) above one of the letters instead of the preferable above-both would be okay for me. So if someone can say how to combine it, would help me a lot. Or type it in here so I can copy/paste it (epsilon, open e, mirrored e and striked u combined with ^ ´ ` and ˇ).

So if someone can say how to combine it, would help me a lot. Or type it in here so I can copy/paste it (epsilon, open e, mirrored e and striked u combined with ^ ´ ` and ˇ).

The best way is to create up a special keyboard map. I've done that for phonetic symbols on Windows, using MSKLC. (There are still a few minor bugs left in that keyboard mapping, and it only goes up to Unicode 5.0, and does not support Uralicists. It's core target is the IPA, but I've augmented it for Sinologist notations.) Alternatively, you can download a keyboard map from Tavultesoft, though they're a bit more awkward to start up than Microsoft keyboards. For cut and paste the characters are:

Plain non-ASCII vowels: æ ɛ ɔ ə ɤ ʉ ɯ ɩ̈ (the last one is a combination of two characters)

Decomposed (i.e. the diacritic is a separate character) combinations of vowel and tonemark:

à ā á â ǎ ă

æ̀ ǣ ǽ æ̂ æ̌ æ̆

ɛ̀ ɛ̄ ɛ́ ɛ̂ ɛ̌ ɛ̆

è ē é ɛ̂ ě ĕ

ì ī í î ǐ ĭ

ɔ̀ ɔ̄ ɔ́ ɔ̂ ɔ̌ ɔ̆

ò ō ó ô ǒ ŏ

ù ū ú û ǔ ŭ

ə̀ ə̄ ə́ ə̂ ə̌ ə̆

ɤ̀ ɤ̄ ɤ́ ɤ̂ ɤ̌ ɤ̆

ʉ̀ ʉ̄ ʉ́ ʉ̂ ʉ̌ ʉ̆

ɯ̀ ɯ̄ ɯ́ ɯ̂ ɯ̌ ɯ̆

ỳ ȳ ý ŷ y̌ y̆

ɩ̈̀ ɩ̈̄ ɩ̈́ ɩ̈̂ ɩ̈̌ ɩ̈̆

Composed where possible:

(There are no precompositions for ɛ, ɔ, ə, ɤ, ʉ and ɩ or for the combinations æ̀, æ̂, æ̌, æ̆, y̌ and y̆, and they will never be added to Unicode. There are a couple of precompositions available if you use Greek iota instead of Latin iota, but I recommend not using them.)

à ā á â ǎ ă

ǣ ǽ

è ē é ê ě ĕ

ì ī í î ǐ ĭ

ò ō ó ô ǒ ŏ

ù ū ú û ǔ ŭ

ỳ ȳ ý ŷ

You may need to experiment with the font. For exampe, Lucida Sans Unicode mangles the combinations with two accents. My usual fallback is Code2000, but its too large for the old version of GhostScript I use on Linux. I included combinations with breve because Mike English has noted that breve is much better supported than caron.

Thanks Richard. The characters you posted work perfectly with a standard Arial font in Anki. Although it is not the preferred one-tonemark-above-two-letters thing you helped me a lot with it!