You realize how easy and simple English is compared to some other languages, when you come across Spanish in which you have to type or write characters with various accents and tildes. If you do not use these accents when typing in Spanish, then it really does not convey the same information. For example, typing “Donde esta el bano” is not same as “¿dónde está el baño?” for the obvious reason. It is like the chef forgot to put in all the herbs and spices when cooking the turkey this Thanksgiving day. But typing those accented characters using a standard English keyboard is not really a walk in the park.
Fortunately, you can avail yourself the features provided by a freeware called Extra Keys tool. This simple tool makes is very easy to type in the accented letters and special characters in any window whether it is Notepad or Microsoft Word.
Upon installation it starts to reside in the notification area and shows a small virtual keypad containing only those hard to type accented letters, special characters etc. Before you can start typing in using this tool, you have to choose a target window from the small listbox that appears in the keypad itself. If your target window (like Notepad, Microsoft Word, etc) does not appear in the list then you have to refresh the list by clicking on the small refresh button next to it. You can close the small keypad window anytime you please, and when you need it anytime later then you can just click on the notification area icon of Extra Keys.
Conclusion: Extra Keys is a necessary tool for all the people starting to learn the Spanish language. But it is not limited to Spanish, some other languages also need such characters and you can use it for those reasons too.
You can download the Extra Keys from http://www.deeproot.co.uk/extrakeys.html.