Arabic keyboard layout, useful dictionaries etc

Wednesday, August 27, 2014

There are lots of good Arabic resources around but sometimes they take a long time to find!

1. Arabic keyboard layout- the normal MS one is useless, so many prefer the one used by the excellent (and free) Shibboleth software (which is excellent for Arabic, Syriac, Hebrew and about 15 other exotic languages). So to add a new keyboard layout follow the instructions at: http://ilgthegeek.livius.net/2010/05/31/editing-windows-custom-keyboard-layouts/ using the unicode info at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_script_in_Unicode.

2. Online Arabic Dictionaries-quite a variety to choose at: Lexilogos. Plus there's lots of vocab and learning resources there too.

3. Arabic-English parallel texts- top quality books with important Arabic texts: Uni Chicago press/BYU books.