How can I type stress marks on Mac OS using the Russian keyboard?

September 9, 2013 7:48 PM

How can I type stress marks on Mac OS X using the Russian keyboard? I'm talking about, for example, the ´ marks like in "Соединённые Шта́ты Аме́рики"—the а́ and the е́. Thank you!

I'm using the built-in Russian keyboard layout with OS 10.8. Bonus points for any neat tips or tricks that a beginner might not know about using a Russian keyboard!

posted by reductiondesign to Computers & Internet (10 answers total)

On my US keyboard, option+E then a vowel will type an accented character. Maybe it's the same?
posted by wongcorgi at 7:58 PM on September 9, 2013

In pretty much every OSX app, you can go to Edit - Special Characters (or Command + Option + T) and it will bring up a dialog box. Click on "Latin" down at the bottom left, and you have a ton of latin alphabetic characters to choose from. Scroll down for all the lower case variants. When you find one you are likely to use a lot, click on it, then press the Add to Favorites button on the right. This makes it more easily available from the menu (not sure if there is a way of shortcutting to favorites without going to the dialog).
posted by Joh at 8:46 PM on September 9, 2013

Oh, and once you have chosen a character, double click it for it to by typed into your text window!
posted by Joh at 8:48 PM on September 9, 2013

It says here that you can hold down a key until it pops up a list of variant characters.

So for example hold down the a as you type замок.
posted by Wrinkled Stumpskin at 9:17 PM on September 9, 2013 [2 favorites]

Wrinkled Stumpskin, you have blown my mind. That's äwęšømé!
posted by Georgina at 9:21 PM on September 9, 2013 [1 favorite]

The same trick works on iOS as well, if anyone needs to type accented characters on his or her phone.
posted by tylerkaraszewski at 10:19 PM on September 9, 2013

Best answer: None of the Russian keyboard layouts that ship with OS X appear to support easy entry of accented Cyrillic vowels, the same way the Latin keyboards do. And holding down Cyrillic vowels doesn't offer the accented variant the same way it does for Latin vowels, on either OS X or iOS.

Characters like и́ are actually a combination of two characters: the base character и and a combining acute accent. One way you can type these characters is the following: type the base character (e.g. и) using one of the Russian keyboard layouts, then switch to the US or US Extended layout and type the combining acute accent with Option-Shift-E. Then switch back to the Russian layout and continue.

That's pretty cumbersome, though, so it might just be easier to copy and paste the letters in. Here's a list: а́ э́ и́ о́ у́ ы́ я́ е́ ё́ ю́ А́ Э́ И́ О́ У́ Ы́ Я́ Е́ Ё́ Ю́

If you're feeling adventurous, you could try designing a new keyboard layout with Ukulele that includes the accented vowels.
posted by pmdboi at 10:28 PM on September 9, 2013

What Russian layout do you prefer to use in OS X — Russian, Russian PC, or Russian Phonetic? I'd be willing take a stab at making a modified version of the layout that includes an acute accent key.
posted by pmdboi at 10:30 PM on September 9, 2013

Best answer: It looks like you're an American student, so I went ahead and made a Russian keyboard layout with accents, based on the Russian Phonetic keyboard. You can install it as follows:

1. Download the "Russian - Phonetic Accents.keylayout" file from here. The name of the downloaded file should be "Russian - Phonetic Accents.keylayout"; if it ends with ".txt", rename it in Finder and remove the ".txt".

2. In Finder, open a new window. Click on the Go menu and select "Go to Folder…". Type "~/Library/Keyboard Layouts". Drag the "Russian - Phonetic Accents.keylayout" file into the "Keyboard Layouts" folder.

3. Quit System Preferences if it's running. Open System Preferences.

4. Click on the "Language & Text" icon. Click on the "Input Sources" tab. You should see a list of keyboard layouts; one of them should be "Russian - Phonetic Accents". Enable it by clicking the checkbox next to it.

There should be a little flag in the menu bar at the top of the screen, if there wasn't already. Click on it and select "Russian - Phonetic Accents". To type an accented vowel, type option-' (that's option-apostrophe) and then the vowel, e.g. option-' + я = я́. The layout is the same as Russian Phonetic otherwise.
posted by pmdboi at 11:30 PM on September 9, 2013 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: pmdboi, Ukeleke was exactly what I needed! I whipped up my own version of the non-phonetic keyboard, installed it following your instructions, and it's working perfectly; thank you so much!
posted by reductiondesign at 10:37 PM on September 10, 2013