A Bangla Keyboard using the Bangla phonemes

Please Read the following description completely before you start using the Nobolipi Pro Bangla Keyboard. ‘Nobolipi Pro Bangla Keyboard ’ (নবলিপি প্রো বাঙ্লা কীবোর্ড ) provides a simple and linguistically sound way to type Bangla (বাঙ্লা, বাঙলা, বাংলা) using the Bangla phonemes. It has fewer keys and does not use the ‘Pholas’ or ‘Kars’ (no diacritic keys). It is intuitive with a linguistic sense. To type any Bangla word, its constructive phonemes are just typed, in a progressive manner. (The Keyboard includes extra two Assamese letters to support the Assamese Script as well.)

The Nobolipi Pro Bangla Keyboard is coded on the latest AOSP Keyboard open source, and thus one can easily enable and then switch among any other keyboards available in the AOSP Keyboard . One can quickly and easily shuffle between Bangla and English typing back and forth, for example, by just enabling the Bangla and the English Keyboards, as described below.

After installing to activate the App, open and follow the installation instructions. Tap on 'Configure additional languages' in the third step and then de-select ‘Use system language’ and select Bengali and English (US), for example.

Alternatively, you can go to Settings then ‘Controls’ panel, then'Language and input', and then tick on 'Nobolipi Premium Keyboard' in the Keyboards and input methods section, then to enable Bangla Typing, click on the right side on the gear symbol and then ‘Input languages’ and then de-select ‘Use system language’ and select Bengali and English (US), for example. To choose the Bangla Keyboard for typing, long press any text field, a tiny keyboard icon will appear in the notification bar along with the current default keyboard. Select 'Bengali Nobolipi Premium Keyboard' .

Once you start using Nobolipi Keyboard, you can switch among the selected languages just by tapping on the circular world-map icon key, adjacent to the spacebar.

Practice the following words first to get the hang of typing Bangla in Nobolipi Premium Keyboard. Type-in the keys at the left to get the word in the bracket:

আকআশ (আকাশ)

অজঅগঅর (অজগর)

ইইগঅল (ঈগ‌ল)

কলআস (ক্লাস)

নউউতঅন (নূত‌ন )

ওইরআবঅত (ঐরাবত )

কওউশঅল (কৌশল)

কঋষঅক (কৃষ‌ক)

জঞআন (জ্ঞান)

সঅকষঅম (সক্ষম)

উ ঁচউ(উঁচু )

দবইতইইয়ও (দ্বিতীয়ো )

সঅতয়ই, সঅতযই (সত্যি )

অনয়আয়, অনযআয়, অনঅ্যায় (অন্যায়)

Here are a few important points on the ‘Nobolipi Premium Keyboard’ to type Bangla:

a) You can use the SHIFT key to pick the shifted letters as required, but the preferred way is to do a longpress from the default keyboard to get the shifted letters. For example, to type the letter ‘ঝ’ make a longpress on the key ‘জ’. That way everything can be typed-in from a single screen with speed and simplicity.

b) A word is typed in a progressive manner, that is the constructive Bangla consonants and the vowel phonemes are typed in progression as it sounds. For Example, to type ‘কে’ the keypads which must be pressed in sequence are ‘কএ’, and such.

c) Only the letter forms of the vowels are used for the keypads, the Keyboard IME engine figures it out whether to put the diacritic form (‘phola’ or ‘kar’) or the letter form. If the user wants to force the letter form of a vowel right after a consonant, for example, he just needs to press the ‘অ’ key in between the two.

d) The four diphthong vowels (whether in letter form or in kar/diacritic form) are typed in by their constituent vowel keys as: a) ঈ = ইই, b) ঊ = উউ, c) ঐ = ওই , and d) ঔ = ওউ

e) If two or more consonant keys are typed-in consecutively without any vowels in-between them, those consecutive consonants form a conjunct (যুক্তাক্ষর). To write two or more consecutive consonants without making it a conjunct, the key ‘অ’ must be typed in-between the consonants.

f) A long press on the 'Full Stop' key provides a convenient way to choose other punctuation keys as needed.

You may look at http://www.nobobangla.com/ in case you need more help in understanding how to write Banlga using Bangla phonemes.