I got my first letter from Nicole yesterday. Unfortunately it was just after I had mailed my fifth letter to her (every Saturday so far!), so our communications are substantially crossed. In the letter she included my name in Armenian letters and signed it with her name in Armenian letters. Since I type my letters on the computer and I know that there are fonts built in to Windows with Armenian (unicode fonts like Arial), I started trying to figure out how to incorporate some Armenian letters in my letters.
Nicole
Նիկոլ
To create these letters on the web you have to know the 4-digit unicode number of each letter. Nicole’s letters are: 1350, 1387, 1391, 1400, 1388. Each number has to start with an ampersand and pound and then end with a semicolon. It helps if you increase the size of the font.
Ted (1359-1383-1380)
Տէդ
To do the same thing in Word 2007, you have to use the hexadecimal version of the number. You just type it in, then you highlight the 4 letters and press ALT+X. The hex codes for Nicole are 0546-056B-056F-0578-056C. For Ted it is 054F-0567-0564. In previous versions of Word I was able to hold down ALT and then type in the 4-digit decimal number. When I let go of ALT the character appeared. Using Character Map is practically useless for this exercise.
It was helpful to refer to this page which lists all of the letters and codes as well as this page which includes the sounds each letter makes.
Now I need the word for “uncle.”
On our Mac you just set the the voice output to Armenian, say something in English, and it translates what you say into any word processor using the Armenian fonts. I just did a test, and the words Ted and Nicole perfectly matched what you show above. Then you say “send letter” into the microphone and a little Armenian man comes by and picks up the letter at no charge. We gave him some cookies, though.
I hear that in the next version of Windows they are going to include L.A.M. mail. It’s about time. This is something I’ve been waiting on since Windows 2000.