Well, thought the goal is to type them fast, without going through menus, clicks, looking into the tables, navigating the web, etc. You hold down Alt, type from the numeric keypad, be careful that numlock is on, say 140, release alt: î. Hold down Alt, type 235, release alt: δ, after a while you learn the ascii codes of the characters you use most often. There are some tricks to access unicode characters which are not in the current 256-wide set, for example typing a 0 in front, followed by the unicode of the char, or typing a "+" and then the extended unicode of the character, Like this: ۞, or this: ∰, or this: ㎒ (you may need a [URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alt_code"]registry trick[/URL] for it!).

In time you learn the characters you use most often and you can type them very fast, without breaking the rhythm of the normal typing to look into the tables and click the mouse. I know a Chinese girl who can type Chinese by this method, she knows the unicodes of almost all usual chinese characters. Like 你好吗? (Ha! it took me almost 3 minutes to find the right characters in the unicode tables! But don't tell to these guys here!)

For basic diacriticals when you just want to make the intended accented letter clear, just follow the letter with the markup, e.g. "the first time I met her fiance' he was bombed on pin~a coladas and loudly singing [i]Deutschland u"ber Alles[/i]."

Since anything worth taking time to 'make it look nice' should be composed offline anyway to prevent the internet from eating your homework, you can stash a list of common markups in a text composition file and just copy-and-paste as needed, thus "the first time I met her fiancé he was bombed on piña coladas and loudly singing [i]Deutschland über Alles[/i]."

Here's the basic markups-string I keep handy: äöüßáàéèæïçñ. No need to separately store uppercase versions because my text-editor's uppercasing (select-text / ctrl-u) handles them properly (including the German [i]scharfes s[/i], which stands for 'ss' and exists only in lowercase form): ÄÖÜSSÁÀÉÈÆÏÇÑ.

Also have a more-complete list of such and their HTML-codes in my composition file. It's not rocket science.

Or we can just insist that everyone use English. I'm a genius!

[QUOTE=only_human;421618]I'm a genius![/QUOTE]
[URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_terms_with_diacritical_marks"] Hmm... [/URL]
:razz:

[QUOTE=LaurV;421619][URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_terms_with_diacritical_marks"] Hmm... [/URL]
:razz:[/QUOTE]
That's why we need a fence around English - and we'll make the world pay for it.

I would almost believe you if I wouldn't know your duolingo efforts/results :razz:
ಊ

[QUOTE=LaurV;421623]I would almost believe you if I wouldn't know your duolingo efforts/results :razz:
ಊ[/QUOTE]
I'm glad you realise that I'm just mocking the stupid things that get said. We wouldn't need [URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law"]Poe's law[/URL] if so many extremely thoughtless people weren't so outspoken. Parody is hard to distinguish from sincerity.

[QUOTE=LaurV;421623]I would almost believe you if I wouldn't know your duolingo efforts/results :razz:
ಊ[/QUOTE]
You are only 14 points behind me this week on Duolingo.

We use this free utility: [URL]http://www.copypastecharacter.com/Xyzzy/xyzzy-1[/URL]

You can easily set up your own list.

:mike:

[QUOTE=ewmayer;421617]...
It's not rocket science.[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=only_human;421618]Or we can just insist that everyone use English. I'm a genius![/QUOTE]

Thanks for the variety of ways. I didn't intend to be a pen~a in the a**.

I have only English on my resume', but I'm getting u"ber it.

[QUOTE=only_human;421620]That's why we need a fence around English - and we'll make the world pay for it.[/QUOTE]

Literate Americans (those can read and watch debates) cannot support that clown.

Spotted in NYT article: [URL="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/14/opinion/campaign-stops/the-tempting-of-bernie-sanders.html"]Trumperdammergung[/URL]

WP Wonkblog:
[URL="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/01/13/the-totes-amazesh-way-millennials-are-changing-the-english-language/"]The totes amazesh way millennials are changing the English language[/URL]
[QUOTE]OK, but why does it all sound so weird?

Totes-words sound strange because they often end on strange sounds. This is a fascinating fact for linguists. There aren’t any English words, for instance, that end on “nf” or “aish” — which is totally arbitrary, Spradlin says, because we use these sounds all the time in the middle of words. Sinful. Infamy. Vacation. Relationship. In totes-speak, those words become: Sinf. Inf. Vacaish. Relaish.

We’re very unused to hearing words finish like that, and that may be why people react so negatively to these abbreviations. They sound funny.

But sounding funny is also part of the point. There’s something else very strange going on with totes-speak, Spradlin says. People are putting “-sh” sounds at the end of words to sound cute. Instead of saying imposs for “impossible,” people like to say imposh. They even say things like maybsh. This happens in other languages such as Japanese and Russian, because the “-sh” sound tends to be associated with baby-talk. But Spradlin says it has never been observed in English, at least not in this widespread way.[/QUOTE]