Phonetic keyboard layout Phonetic keyboard layout A phonetic keyboard layout is a setup in which the letters of a language correspond to the keys in the keyboard layout for another language and assumes a one-to-one correspondence between letters in the languages that is based on their sound. Russian has two popular keyboard layouts: The Cyrillic letters are on the same keys as similarly-sounding Roman letters: A-А, Б-B, В-V, Г-G, Д-D, Ф-F, K-K, O-O and so on. There are Russian phonetic layouts based on the QWERTY layout and others based on other localized layouts. The Russian phonetic layout is especially suited for foreigners studying
Thumb-shift keyboard with the use of thumb-shift key on the same side of the keyboard relative to the key. Thumb action of the opposite hand (known as "cross-shifting") is used to type the characters representing a voiced sound, written in hiragana by adding a diacritic mark (dakuten) on the corresponding voiceless sound characters. This has an advantage in memorization because it is not necessary to memorize two positions. For example, take the home position of the right index finger (letter 'j' in QWERTY). Without thumb action, it is 'to' (と). It is 'o' (お) with the right thumb shift and 'do' (ど)