Bug in Apple Arabic Fonts

A poster in the Apple Support Communities has pointed out that most Apple Arabic fonts in Mavericks will not display certain vowel sign sequ...

Being a Good Communication Partner

        I spend a great deal of my time training people to be good communication partners to children learning to use aac systems and learn...

Writing Systems of the World

I recently came across this interesting map showing the geography of the world's major writing systems.

Mac 30-Year Anniversary Font

See this page to get a custom font created by Apple showing Mac models of the last 30 years. The characters are in the Unicode Private Use A...

Reading Non-Unicode Sinhala

While it is strongly recommended that only Unicode fonts be used for writing Sinhala, sometimes you have to work with text created using leg...

iWork For iCloud Beta: Still No RTL Or Indic Support

The update for iWork for iCloud Beta announced by Apple January 23, 2014 (the 3rd since its initial release to the public last July) did not...

Answering Questions

I was doing an evaluation the other day, with a boy who really hit home to me the issue of being able to answer questions.  It's an issu...

App To Add Fonts to iOS Devices

Thanks to Keith Martin, there is now an app available which lets users add fonts to their iOS 7 devices, using the technique described in an...

New Year - new goals? Nope.

The start of a new calendar year comes about mid-way through the school year.  While everyone else is setting new goals, making new resoluti...

Story Elements/Story Grammar - Important Language Skills

Once students have the ability to sequence events in their daily routines and have moved on to providing personal narratives about their exp...

THE LONDON STORY

Visit London, the official visitor's guide, offers us The London Story, a collection of videos where Londoners tell us their stories abo...

Mavericks Update Fixes Japanese Input Problem

The glitch with the Japanese Kotoeri IM reported here has been fixed in the OS 10.9.1 update released 12/17/2013.  Kotoeri Preferences (foun...

Typing Paleo-Hebrew and Phoenician

I recently came across a source for fonts for Paleo-Hebrew and other ancient semitic scripts on this page. Input for most can be via the OS ...

Language Map of the US

I recently came across this map showing details of where languages other than English are common in the US.   Results I found somewhat surpr...

Non-Unicode Tamil Fonts

While it is strongly recommended that only Unicode fonts be used for writing Tamil, sometimes you have to work on documents which were creat...

Bug In Apple Devanagari Font

A poster in the Apple Support Communities has pointed out that the font Devanagari Sangam used for iOS (and also available in OS X 10.7 and ...

TOP 100 FREE EDUCATION SITES

Help Teaching offers us a compilation of free sites to be used teaching or learning English. As they say: "Need some new inspiration fo...

Keyman App For iOS Now Installs Fonts As Well

The Keyman app which vastly expands the screen keyboard possibilities for iOS devices, reported here, now also installs a font if one is mis...

Multilingual Mac Web Site Updated

I've updated the reference web site, Unleash Your Multilingual Mac, to reflect OS 10.9.  Comments and corrections by viewers are always ...

Alternative Bengali Keyboard for OS X

A poster in the Apple discussion forums (ASC) recently brought the "Bangla-onkur" Bengali keyboard to my attention, which may be o...

Language and Literacy: The iPad in the Special Ed Classroom

I have been talking about some specifics of using the iPad and apps in the special education classroom for developing language and literacy...

Adding Custom Fonts To iOS Devices

Beginning with iOS 7, it is possible to add custom fonts to an iOS device via a mobile.config file.   The reference doc for how one creates ...

New Keyboard App For iOS Covers Vast Number Of Languages

Tavultesoft has released an iOS version of its Keyman multilingual keyboard app, which they say can cover over 600 languages.  For info see ...

Guided Reading with Story Book Apps

So, I suppose the next logical discussion is about using iPad storybook apps in guided reading sessions.  So many of the kids I work with ha...

OS 10.9 Mavericks: New Arabic Fonts

To the 7 Arabic fonts provided with OS 10.8 (Al Bayan, Baghdad, Damascus, Decotype Naskh, Geeza Pro, Nadeem, Kufi) Apple has added 11 more i...

iOS 7 Offers Added Languages Display In Some Apps

One of the somewhat hidden features of iOS 7 is the vastly expanded list of extra fonts which can be downloaded by certain apps when necessa...

OS 10.9 Mavericks: Language Glitches

Some major language problems  found so far in the new OS X: +You can no longer set the keyboard layout for Kotoeri Japanese input in its pre...

Fonts Included In OS 10.9 and iOS 7

For OS X Mavericks (10.9) the list is at http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5944 For iOS 7, you can find it at http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5878

TWITTEEN'S NEWS

Let me introduce you a new blog where you can practice reading and listening comprehension activities through real tweets.  The blog is stil...

Guided Reading for Special Education/Language Learners

Shared and guided reading are great ways to build language skills and build engagement.  Building interactions around books also can encour...

Pages 5.0: Significant New Language Features

The long awaited update of Pages 09, Pages 5.0, was released Oct. 22, 2013.  It requires OS 10.9 Mavericks, and my initial testing indicates...

OS 10.9 Mavericks: New Language Features

So far I have the following: +3 new system localizations:  Vietnamese, Malay, Indonesian (for a total of 33) +11 new Arabic fonts +New refer...

iWork For iCloud Beta: Still No RTL Or Indic Support

As far as I can tell, the update for iWork for iCloud Beta announced by Apple October 22, 2013, still has totally broken support for RTL and...

Phonological Awareness Skills for AAC Users

Sometimes teachers are unsure how to teach or evaluate phonological awareness skills in students who can not speak - and therefore cannot “s...

iOS 7 Language Glitches

I  have seen the following reports in the Apple Support Communities of problems with language support: +Greek keyboard missing at some stage...

iOS 7 Language Specs Published

It looks to be the same as for iOS 6 except for the addition of keyboard and dictionary support for Tamil, English (Canadian), and English (...

Bug in Apple Devanagari Fonts

A poster in the Apple Support Communities has pointed out that the fonts Devanagari MT and Devanagari Sangam used for OS X and iOS produce t...

iWork for iCloud Beta: No RTL or Indic Support

Apple has released the public beta of its new iWork for iCloud, which provides a web version of Pages and other iWork apps.   My initial tes...

New Language Features in OS X 10.9 Mavericks and iOS 7

There seem to be only a couple new language features in OS X 10.9 and iOS 7 as announced June 10, 2013.  Thanks to blog readers I have so fa...

Indic Script Bug in Final Cut Pro X

A poster in the Apple Support Communities has pointed out that it's not possible to create Tamil language titles in Final Cut Pro X via ...

IDN Email Bug in iOS Mail

If you happen to have an email address that uses an International Domain Name (IDN), i.e. one which includes non-ASCII characters (like info...

Bug in Apple Devanagari Font

A poster in the Apple Support Communities has pointed out that the font Devanagari Sangam used for iOS (and also available in OS X 10.7 and ...

Typing Runic

In addition to its historic uses, the Runic script appears in the recent Hobbit movie and the Tolkien book on which that is based.  To type ...

OS X: Glitches With Traditional Chinese Cangjie Input

A poster in the Apple Support Communities recently pointed out that some Chinese characters cannot be made with the Cangjie sequences they w...

OS X Specialized Language Fonts

Various fonts provided with OS X have the necessary characters so they can be used for multiple languages.  For example, Arial can do Englis...

Apple Opens Chinese Language Support Community

Apple has just opened a Chinese-language set of user-to-user discussion forums (the Apple  Support Communties), which you can get to at http...

Alternative Text-to-Speech App for iOS

For those who want different voices than what Apple provides via the Speak Selection function in iOS,  I have recently come across an app Vo...

Bug In OS X Azeri Keyboard Layout

The Azeri keyboard layout provided by Apple with OS X has no question mark, which can be very inconvenient.   Possible remedies are a) Creat...

Reading and Typing Traditional Mongolian Script

Traditional Mongolian is perhaps the most difficult script to display on a computer. Much like Arabic, Mongolian characters are connected an...

Typing Nuoso Yi in iOS

An earlier article provided some info on how to input Nuoso Yi in OS X.  Thanks to Dennis Walters you can now find a way to do the same on i...