How To Type Asante Twi On An iPhone Or iPad

With the exception of a few people, most of the Twi speaking iPhone and iPad users I interact with on the Internet use the characters 3 and ) in place of Ɛ and Ɔ when typing. They use these because the standard iOS keyboard doesn’t come with Ɛ and Ɔ.

You have two choices if you want to type Ɛ and Ɔ. You can save the two characters as keyboard shortcuts if your device runs iOS 7 or lower or you can download and install Nkyea Keyboard from the App Store if your device runs iOS 8 or higher.

USING KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS
I came across the keyboard shortcuts technique on @ObengWoHa‘s Akan language Tumblr blog a while back before iOS 8 was released. Below is how to add the characters as shortcuts on your keyboard.

1. Open the Notes app on your iPhone or iPad and copy and paste ɛ and ɔ from this blog into a note.
2. Open the Settings app, tap General, tap Keyboard and tap Shortcuts to open the Shortcuts screen.
3. Tap the + button on the top bar.
4. Copy ɛ from the Notes app, paste it into Phrase, type eee into Shortcut and tap Save.
5. Tap the + button again
6. Copy ɔ from the Notes app, paste it into Phrase and type ooo into Shortcut and tap Save.

Now any time you want to type ɛ or ɔ in any app, all you do is type eee or ooo and Space respectively. That’s it!

GET NKYEA KEYBOARD
Personally I think the keyboard shortcuts technique is a bit cumbersome so I made Nkyea Keyboard when Apple released iOS 8. As you may know iOS 8 supports third-party keyboards. You should download and install Nkyea Keyboard as one of your keyboards if you are running iOS 8 or higher. Below is how to install Nkyea Keyboard after you’ve downloaded it.

1. Open the Settings app, tap General, tap Keyboard and tap Keyboards
2. On the Keyboards screen tap Add New Keyboard…
3. On the Add New Keyboard screen tap Nkyea to add the Nkyea Keyboard
4. Final tap Nkyea Keyboard – Nkyea and tap Allow Full Access and choose Allow from the alert.

Now to use Nkyea Keyboard press the globe button on the standard iOS keyboard and choose Nkyea Keyboard – Nkyea.

NOTE: You can only choose different keyboard colours and hear key taps when Allow Full Access is enabled.

Apart from making it easy to type Ɛ and Ɔ, Nkyea Keyboard also includes a nifty built-in English-to-Twi word translator. You can use the translator when you get stuck typing a Twi word. Below is how to use the translator.

1. Swipe down on the keyboard to reveal the translator.
2. Type the word you want to translate, in English, and tap trans and it’ll be translated into Twi.
3. Now tap add at the bottom of the keyboard to add the translation into what you are typing.
4. Swipe up on the keyboard to hide the translator and continue typing.

Using the translator

So you can use the shortcuts technique to add Ɛ and Ɔ into your typing if you use iOS 7 or lower or you can download and install Nkyea Keyboard, get all the keys necessary for typing Twi and the added benefit of using a powerful built-in English-to-Twi translator if you use iOS 8 or higher.