Thanks to the hard work of Benjamin Yang of Panlex, the Manchu Studies Group is excited to share a set of 11 different Unicode fonts for Manchu (which Ben adapted from a previously-existing set of non-Unicode fonts) and a keyboard/input method, developed by Ben, that you can use to type them (and any other Unicode-based Manchu font).
Fonts
The following fonts can be downloaded and installed to your computer (updated 18 August 2020; if you are having any display issues and do not have the newest version of the fonts, please try downloading them again before contacting us about a possible bug).
Keyboards
The following keyboards (one for standard Manchu, one for Sibe) require installation of Keyman. Once Keyman is installed and the desired keyboard has been downloaded, the keyboard can be added via the configuration menu (open Keyman, click configuration, click install keyboard).
(These are version 1.2.1, updated August 20, 2020; if you are having any input issues and do not have the newest version of the keyboard, please try downloading them again before contacting us about a possible bug).
Instructions for Typing Manchu/Sibe
The keyboards downloadable here are based on the Möllendorf system of transliterating Manchu, with the following exceptions and clarifications:
- ū is entered using v
- š is entered using x
- i has two standalone forms. Typing i will produce the genitive case i, to type the form of i that means “he” (and is used to transliterate pinyin yi), type I (shift+i)
- k’, g’, and h’ (special letters used in Chinese loanwords) are entered using K, G, and H (shift+k, shift+g, shift+h)
- ts’ is entered as ts
- the special vowel used as the equivalent of the i in pinyin si and ci is entered as y (this letter can only be used immediately following s and ts – otherwise typing y will produce the consonant y)
- c’y is entered as cy (analogous to jy, these are the special forms used to transliterate pinyin chi and zhi respectively)
- ž is entered as z
- the special form of i that follows dz is simply entered as i (so to produce the Manchu transliteration of pinyin zi, type dzi)
- to type a non-breaking space (if, for instance, you want to prevent a case marker from appearing on a different line from the noun to which it is attached), type shift+space
- to type n followed by g (without typing the letter ng), type n’g (n followed by apostrophe, followed by g). This also works to break up any other double-letter combination (so t followed by s, as opposed to the special character ts’, requires typing t’s).
Known Bugs/Usage Tips
On web browsers, it is nearly impossible to force the genitive i to display correctly – this is a problem with how web browsers parse text and is difficult to resolve. And it’s gotten worse – we used to be able to make it display correctly on this page, but it no longer does. You can try typing the letter by using the key combination “Right Alt + i” but even this hack no longer seems to work consistently. Our apologies – we will let you know if a solution is developed. Note that this should not be a problem if you are typing in a word processing program like Microsoft Word.
Some Macs have trouble with inputting certain letters (we’ve had reports about i and ng). If you are having errors of this sort – say, you type i in the middle of a word and nothing appears, make sure your computer is configured correctly to work with Keyman by following the instructions at this link.
Backspacing sometimes does weird stuff on web browsers. This is a bug with Keyman itself, not the keyboards or fonts.
In some versions of Microsoft Word, the first Manchu or Sibe letter entered in a new document will not connect to the subsequent letter. You can avoid this problem by entering a single space at the start of your document, or by typing a few characters at the start of the document, then highlighting the text you have entered, and then typing your desired text to replace it.
In newer versions of Word, remember that there is an option in the Layout menu for “Vertical for Mongolian” text direction (click Layout on the menu bar, then click Text Direction, then Vertical for Mongolian). This will allow you to properly type vertical script. If this option does not appear, you will need to install the Mongolian language pack. Unfortunately, many other places you might like to type Manchu are not configured for vertical script, and the text you produce will be rotated 90 degrees.
Note that to be readable, most Manchu fonts will require use of a larger type than you are likely to use with other languages.