This Gondi (Devanagari) Keyman keyboard has been designed for use on physical keyboards (laptops, etc.) as well as hand-held touch devices (such as smart phones, tablets, etc.) for the Gondi language spoken in the districts of Yavatmal, Chandrapur, Gadchiroli and Aheri of Maharashtra State in central India.

Touch Keyboard layout

Default Layer

All Gondi words can be typed on the default layer (without the need for invoking Shift).

Shift Layer

The Shift layer contains Hindi and Marathi-specific characters like ख घ झ छ which are not required for Gondi, but could be useful to type borrowed Hindi and Marathi language words.

Numeric Layer

The Numeric 123 layer contains the full range of Arabic digits, Devanagari digits (accessible through a long-press) and other important symbols and lesser used punctuation characters.

The touch layout has some additional functionality of providing short-cuts for commonly used combinations of consonant clusters. For example, holding (long press) the ज character key will show various commonly used Gondi combinations: ज़ ज्‍क ज्त ज्‍न ज्र

Similarly, holding (long-press) the स character key will show common combinations for that letter:

Although the vowel matra forms are not displayed, the keyboard will automatically put the diacritic form on a preceding consonant. So, tapping क ओ will produce the syllable को and tapping इ त ् त ए क ए will produce the word इत्तेके (itteke).

 = इत्तेके

Finally, holding (long press) the . (full-stop or period) key provides other Roman and Devanagari punctuation marks:

Physical Keyboard Layout

The physical keyboard (for use on desktop computers) is rather different to the touch layout, and follows the standard WinScript keyboard layout followed by NLCI’s range of keyboards. With a few exceptions, these work more-or-less phonetically, so kyping k gives क, and typing a gives अ, and so on. The x key is used for the virama (vowel-killer, or consonant joiner), so typing k x gives क् and typing k x k gives क्क.

Default layer:

With Shift depressed:

It is sometimes necessary in the Gondi language to use a halant part way through a word, (for example, वेय्‍लोक्‌नल) especially on a suffix boundary. In order to do this, one must press the x key twice (to add the Zero-Width Non Joiner U+200C). So, for the previous example word, typing v e y x l o k x x n l gives वेय्‍लोक्‌नल.

This table shows how to obtain the various combinations needed:

Keystrokes	Result
k	क
k x	क्
k x k	क्क
k x x k	क्‌क
[ r x q u r i	दर्तुरि

Gondi tends to use the regular digits 0-9, but if the Devanagari digits are required, these can be typed by pressing the ` key (back-tick or tilde ~ key to the left of digit 1) prior to the digit. So pressing `1 would give १ and `2 would give २ and so on.

The underscore key _ (shift+hyphen) is used to produce ॡ so if an underscore is required, then press the hyphen (or dash) key twice: - - produces _