Typing in Indian Languages
March 30th, 2009 | Published in Gmail (Google Mail)
Until now, there hasn't been a good way to send email to friends and family in Hindi, my native language and their language of choice. That's why I'm happy to announce a new feature for Gmail that lets you type email in Indian languages. If you're in India, this feature is enabled by default. If not, you'll need to turn it on in the "Language" section under Settings. Once enabled, just click the Indian languages icon and type words in the way they sound in English -- Gmail will automatically convert them to their Indian language equivalent.
For example, if you have Hindi selected, "namaste" will transliterate to "नमस्ते." We currently support five Indian languages - Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, and Malayalam, and businesses and schools using Google Apps should see this in the coming weeks.