[AnnaKelly]

one word - Multi lingual predictive texting/spellcheck feature. This is absolutely brilliant. I dont think people realize how many bilingual/multilingual people are living in the US and Canada and im not even talking about Europe where everyone is basically a polyglot. I dont remember how many times ive been texting my friends in spanish or french and was missing accents or was afraid to look stupid cuz of my bad spelling. Also texting my old grandmother who speaks very bad english and whose native tongue doesn't even use latin characters poses a huge problem. I know a lot of my immigrant friends are having a hard time communicating with their chinese/russian speaking parents trying to type what sounds like a chinese word in latin characters. Im sure business poeple would benefit from this too! And the whole multitansking platform looks really cool too. Cant wait for it to come out!

Anna

[itmccb]

That was probably my favorite feature, but I'm wondering how it will handle languages with different characters; do you type phonetically? How do you switch keyboards? I wish they'd shown more.

[AnnaKelly]

thats the beauty of touch keyboard, I think it will switch automatically based on an input language -- i mean how else would it work?

[richardat]

I don't know much about this area.....heh, funny, I was just talking with some PHD's about how science has made the international language english (in their worlds anyways).

But anyways....can't all platforms do this? I know the iphone supports multiple keyboards you can switch between, and does predictive typing, autocorrect, and dictionary in a whole bunch of languages. I assume android does as well?

[belfastdispatcher]

They do but they don't switch automatically as you type.

[Roo Zilla]

Maybe it will work like this:

[richardat]

They do but they don't switch automatically as you type.

AHhhhh....thanks, I see. Interesting indeed....so this is for the Spanglish-type speakers? (kind of funny that the OP would be worried about looking bad for spelling when mixing and matching languages in texts....which have never really been shining examples of grammatical perfection! :-) .Would have to see details of how it's implemented as itmcbb says.

I'm guessing you pick the languages you want it to predict.....can't imagine predictive texting with ALL the languages at once ( I think iphone has over 40 for predictive texting alone). If it's well done, it could be a neat feature, but I don't THINK it would be a game-changer....especially since, presumably, Apple and/or Android would easily be able to implement predictive texting in more than one language if they liked, considering they already have multiple language predicting established.

[richardat]

Maybe it will work like this:

Neato.

Ok....been reading about it cause of Roo Zilla's pics.....now I'm more confused than ever by the OP. I think they're either pulling are leg or dont' know what they're talking about!

OP....you can set your phone (if it's iphone...and assume Android has something), for multiple keyboards, and multiple languages...yes this way you'll never have to worry about not being able to get the characters you like, and it will predict/correct in whatever language you're using!

[Roo Zilla]

Neato.

Ok....been reading about it cause of Roo Zilla's pics.....now I'm more confused than ever by the OP. I think they're either pulling are leg or dont' know what they're talking about!

Looking at the following quote:

thats the beauty of touch keyboard, I think it will switch automatically based on an input language -- i mean how else would it work?

I think the OP is under the mistaken impression that multiple keyboards and predictive text in other languages is something completely new. I speak 5 languages and the reason I picked Chinese is because it really is predictive text, for entire phrases. Depending on context it picks the right characters. After I type the phrase in Pinyin, typing space or any punctuation character selects the first item on the list. I speak Mandarin, but I'm illiterate, and can't read or write. I use Pinyin input and the system picks the correct characters about 90%+ of the time given enough context. It's how I text/email in China. In other languages, especially Romance languages like Italian and Spanish, it corrects typos similar to auto-correct in English. If the word requires accents or umlauts, it adds them automatically, but only if the word is unique. If a word exists in versions with and without accents, you have to manually add the accent. In Korean, it places the characters in the correct places, which basically removes all typos. You can type Korean almost without using the space bar.

[timmy t]

Some words are common across languages. Many English words come from French, for instance.

[AnnaKelly]

hmm so you guys are saying that BB10 touted multilingual predictive texting won't be any different from the Iphone?

[richardat]

hmm so you guys are saying that BB10 touted multilingual predictive texting won't be any different from the Iphone?

"any" different? It will certainly be different! Since it is trying to predict in multiple languages at the same time. It may well be better, or at least better for some! People will have to try it and decide for themselves.

All we pointed out is that other platforms do predictive texting in a huge pile of languages, and give very easy access to multiple keyboards....on an iphone you tell it what languages and you can shift character sets and prediction with the push of a button right there on the keyboard, and flip back and forth at will. You should do that yourself, and tell your friends who are having so many problems with it! Then if you think the BB10 setup is better for you, try it when it comes out!