Gondi (Telugu) Keyboard Help

This Gondi (Telugu) Keyman keyboard has been designed for typing Gondi using the Telugu script 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 erstwhile district of Adilabad, which is in the state of Telangana, 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 Telugu-specific characters like ఖ ఘ ఝ ఛ which are not required for Gondi, but could be useful to type borrowed Telugu language words.

Numeric Layer

The Numeric 123 layer contains the full range of Arabic digits, Telugu 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 words, or just combinations of characters. For example, holding (long press) the గ character key will show the Gondi suffix గటల్ as well as several commonly used consonant cluster combinations: గ్త  గ్ద  గ్న  గ్ర  &  గ్ల

Similarly, holding (long press) the త character key will show common suffixes as well as consonanct cluster combinations starting with త:

Although the vowel matra forms are not displayed, the keyboard will automatically put the diacritic form on a preceding consonant. So, tapping క ఒ will produce the syllable కొ and tapping ఇ త ్ త ఎ క ఎ will produce the word ఇత్తెకె (itteke).

 = ఇత్తెకె

Alternatively, holding (long press) the ఇ character key will reveal that ఇత్తెకె is a common-enough Gondi word to warrant it being available as a shortcut on the ఇ key:

Finally, holding (long press) the ? key provides a list of the question words in Gondi:

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 typing k gives క, and typing a gives అ, and so on. The x key is used for the virama (vowel-killer, or consonant joiner), so typing k x gives క్ and typing k x k gives క్క.

Default layer:

With Shift depressed:

Unlike Telugu, it is quite acceptable in the Gondi language to use a virama part way through a word, (for example, వెయ్లొక్‌న) 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 gives వెయ్లొక్‌న.

This table shows how to obtain the various combinations needed:

Gondi tends to use the regular digits 0-9, but if the Telugu script 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 ౧ and `2 would give ౨ and so on.

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