Acquire the ten-finger system not only for your mother tongue, but also for the other language you wish to acquire. There are usually several (country-specific) keyboard layout variants available for each language. The English Wikipedia article “Keyboard layout” offers a very comprehensive overview. The article itself is offered in different languages (menu on the left), other Versions may not be as comprehensive as the English original. The article contains numerous hyperlinks referring to national and country-specific Keyobard information; These subarticles can provide you with a lot of information, also in languages other than English. Always look (in each [sub] article, cat­ego­ry, etc.) on the left for other language versions.

Modern operating systems support all common world­wide assignments. Switching is done either by mouse click or via a self-defined key combination (short­cut).

The following procedure is recommended for learning the keyboard layout of your target language:

Find the corresponding information in the WP-article “Keyboard layout” (or in one of its other language ver­sions)

Example for German, French, and Russian: German: Jump to the section “QWERTZ”, from there follow the link “Main article: QWERTZ” (German article version: “QWERTZ-Tastaturbelegung”). The section “Austria and Germany” contains the hyperlink “Main article: German keyboard lay­out”. This article, “German keyboard lay­out”, provides comprehensive country-specific in­for­ma­tion (German article version “Tastaturbelegung”). Now click on the keyboard shown there, whereupon the WP page German keyboard layout "T1" according to DIN 2137-1:2012-06 appears. Press “More details” at the bottom right, which will take you to the File:KB Germany.svg. French: Go to the “AZERTY” section and select “Main article: AZERTY”. In this article (French ver­sion: “AZERTY”) you will find the relevant in­for­ma­tion. In the “French” section, click on the keyboard shown there, whereupon the WP page “AZERTY layout used in France” appears. Press “More details”, at the bottom right to go to the Wikimedia Commons page „File:KB France.svg“. Russian: In the Cyrillic section “6.4.2 Russian”, several keyboard layouts for Russian are shown. The separate article “JCUKEN” provides more information about the Russian standard keyboard layout.

Now click on the keyboard shown there, whereupon the WP page “ЙЦУКЕН key­board la­yout” appears. Press “More details” at the bottom right, which will take you to the Wikimedia Commons page „File:KB Russian.svg“.

There are now two ways to print the keyboard: You click on the original-SVG-​vector graphic file (German: “original file”, French: “Original file”, Russian: “Ori­gi­nal file”) and it opens in your web browser. Afterwards, go to the print preview in the browser menu: “Print” → “Print pre­view”. Now select “Landscape” for the orientation and then click on “Print”. Alternatively, you can also use a precalculated PNG-​file (different resolutions) for prin­ting. The table with the PNG versions is located under the respective SVG file.

As long as you have not yet mastered the keyboard layout of your target language, pro­ceed as follows: 1. Print the keyboard. 2. Stick it on a firm cardboard base that you can cut or fold. 3. Attach the keyboard to your workplace so that it is always in your field of vision, or make a stand-up display.

To learn new (chapter episode) words, open a word processing file. Write down each new word to be learned in the ten-finger system, at least over several lines. Pro­ceed word by word, paragraph by paragraph. Writing down entire texts is also useful for memorizing them.

Use the numerous instructions on the Internet to select the appropriate keyboard layout. For example, use the search query Russian keyboard or generally the search com­bi­na­tion [target language] keyboard layout [op­er­at­ing system]. Keyboard layout graphics can also be found directly via the image search, for example via the Google image search for Russian keyboard, or for Russian keyboard layout.

Your language learning partner will be amazed if suddenly you can write just as fast or even faster than them. In the physical world, language is the key to the culture of peo­ples and to the hearts of your people. Read the com­pre­hen­sive article on free, powerful online and offline dic­tion­aries, language learning and translation projects: Freely accessible Language Resources: Dictionaries, Machine Translation, Language Courses.

Seriously striving to speak the national language of a local people involves a fundamental respect. The local people will be aware of this and, no matter how advanced your language skills are, you will be met with a correspondingly open-minded attitude.

Take a look at the English WP-​article “Keyboard lay­out”, whi­ch contains de­tailed information about your national key­board lay­out as well as hyperlinks to further articles about each individual keyboard character; WP-SVG graphics are also offered, e.g. on the the German PC-keyboard-layout. On the left side of the “Keyboard layout”-article, you can look up the language version that contains the relevant information for your national

keyboard version. Keyboard lay­out and EFI: In rare cases the EFI and possibly also the predecessor system BIOS or another program require an input with US-American keyboard mapping. Confirmations with “Y” (for “Yes”) and the reconstruction of already set system passwords can only be made if the US mapping is known. It is therefore essential that you file a printout of the US keyboard layout in your physical computer folder (WP-article on the US-keyboard layout, overview on the WP graphic file versions [various resolutions]).