page_title: Latvian orthography
section_title: Keyboard
hierarchical_section_title: Latvian orthography / Computer encoding / Keyboard
caption_attribution_description: English: Latvian ergonomic keyboard layout made according to keyboard layout editor of Tildes Birojs software.
context_page_description: Latvian orthography historically used a system based upon German phonetic principles, while the Latgalian dialect was written using Polish orthographic principles. The present-day Latvian orthography was developed by the Knowledge Commission of the Riga Latvian Association in 1908, and was approved the same year by the orthography commission under the leadership of Kārlis Mīlenbahs and Jānis Endzelīns. Its basis is the Latin script and it was introduced by law from 1920 to 1922 in the Republic of Latvia. For the most part it is phonetic in that it follows the language's pronunciation.
context_section_description: Standard QWERTY keyboards are used for writing in Latvian; diacritics are entered by using a dead key (usually ', occasionally ~). Some keyboard layouts use a modifier key AltGr (most notable of such is the Windows 2000 and XP built-in layout (Latvian QWERTY)). In the early 1990s, the Latvian ergonomic keyboard layout was developed. Although this layout may be available with language support software, it has not become popular because of a lack of keyboards with such a configuration.
caption: The rarely used Latvian ergonomic keyboard layout
exif: {}