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Description of this Mac Phonetic Qwerty Keyboard Layout:

Most Yiddish letters are arranged in a phonetic scheme based on QWERTY (i.e., with reference to the upper left letters in a standard English keyboard).  A "phonetic scheme based on qwerty" means that if you have an American English keyboard, you can easily find komets-alef by typing the letter "o" in the normal position, and a pasekh-alef   by typing the letter "a" in the normal position, etc. The remaining letters are equally easy to remember, increasing your learnng curve and Yiddish typing speed. Final keys (e.g., shlos-mem) are in the Shift position; e.g., shift+m.   The current keyboard layout includes Yiddish punctuation marks.

• Yiddish quotation marks are at Shift + the 3 keys to the right of P (in place of the curly brackets, etc.). Garesh and gershayim are at the apostrophe key (adjacent to the Enter key), normal and Shift, respectively.  [Click here to see what garesh, gershayim, and Yiddish quotation marks are.]

• A makef (Yiddish hyphen) is found to the left of the number 1 on the top row. An alternative English hyphen is found on either the numeric keypad (the minus sign) or to the right of the top row zero key.  [Click here to see the difference between a makef (Yiddish hyphen) and an English hyphen.] An underline symbol (e.g., for making forms) is on shift+the key to the left of the number 1 in the top row. If you have a laptop, you might not have any key to the left of the number 1 on the top row; therefore the makef and the underline symbol are also located in shift + P and O, respectively. A long dash (en dash) is on the shift+hyphen key, to the right of the number 0 on the top row.

• Note that an American quote and apostrophe have been added to Option+C and Option+X, respectively, to aid in text searching in Yiddish documents where these characters have been used.

Credits: The keyboard layout was constructed by  Jack (Yosl) Juni, based on a design by Shoshke-Rayzl Juni, which was based on a Phonetic Yiddish Keyboard used for other platforms for several years.  The original layout design was coordinated by Jack Halpern, with the help of Mark (Meyer) David, Raphael (Refoyl) Finkel, Susannah (Shoshke-Rayzl) Juni, Norman (Noyekh) Miller, and Dorothy (Dobe) Wasserman in consultation with members of the UYIP mailing list and participants of the Yugntruf Yidish-vokh 1998.

Description of The Hebrew Yiddish Style (UYIP) Yiddish Keyboard Layout:

This layout is useful for both Yiddish and Hebrew; and was based on the standard Hebrew keyboard used in Israel (which itself was created from earlier Yiddish typewriter keyboard layouts). A retrofited design which is of particular ease of use for those who are already proficient with a standard Israeli keyboard.

Makef (Yiddish hyphen) is in the shift+V position; a long dash (en dash) is on the shift+B key. The English hyphen remains as on an American keyboard. Garesh and gershayim are at AltGr (that's the Right-hand Alt key) + the two keys to the right of M, respectively.  [Click here to see what garesh, gershayim, and Yiddish quotation marks are.]

Credits: This keyboard layout was constructed by  Jack (Yosl) Juni; and is based on a design created by Mark David for UYIP. The original design had been further modified slightly by Noyekh Miller with Shoshke-Rayzl Yuni.

Keyboard installation instructions:

Following are instructions for installing these keyboards, or any imported OS X keyboard:

• Drag the Keyboard File(s) to the Desktop. (See download link(s) at top of this page, or download a keyboard from elsewhere.) [The above downloads each unstuff to a folder with 2 files.]
• Double-click on the Hard Drive.
• Open the Library.
• Open Keyboard Layouts.
• Drag both of the new Keyboard Files for your layout into Keyboard Layouts.
• Close the Hard Drive.
• Open the Apple Menu,
• Select System Preferences.
• Select Personal -- International.
• Go to the Tab for Input Menu.
• Scroll down to Unicode -- Yiddish Qwerty or HebYid, near the bottom (or find the keyboard you're installing).
• Check the box on the left.
• Click on Language Tab, and go back to the Input Menu
• Hold Command + Q to quit.
• Apple menu -- Log out; Then click on your name to log back in.

That's it. Now, you can always select the new keyboard from any application by clicking on the American flag (assuming you have a default of American English) to change keyboard layouts.