Typing Issues ⌨
Finding a good keyboard 📱
Typing proper Pashto on a phone can be difficult, and so many people make do with Urdu or Farsi keyboards. The following two keyboards are reccommended for good Pashto support:
- For Android: GBoard - the Google Keyboard
- For iOS: the native iOS keyboard
The ـیـ in the middle of words
When you write a ی or a ي, they both appear as a ـیـ in the middle of words. So when you see a ـیـ it can be either:
- a "ay" sound
- a "ee" sound
- a "y" sound
This can lead to confusion when typing or searching for things online. For example when typing the word مینه - meena should you use a ی or a ي in the middle of the word? 🤷♂️ Does it matter? Both look exactly the same, but when you type ctrl + f and try to search for it, it makes a big difference! Try it on these words:
- مینه (spelled with ی)
- مينه (spelled with ي)
It seems best to always use ی when typing in the middle of words, to avoid confusion. This seems to be the most common practice, but it's not always the case. If you use qamosona.com, for example, you will find that the middle of words are often spelled with a ي and so you will need to keep that in mind and use ي in the middle when searching.
ی vs. ى
Depending on the keyboard used, you might get one of two basically identical looking versions of ی. This can cause massive confusion when you search for words. 😖
- ی Farsi Yeh (unicode 06CC) 👍 ✔
- ى Alef Maksura (unicode 0649) 👎 ❌
Make sure you don't have a bad keyboard ⌨🙅♂️ that uses the Alef Maksura ى! To check, you can go to this site and type a ی to see which one you're using.