Not all Android devices come with a complete set of Unicode fonts.
If you wish to install additional fonts, you will likely need to root your device.
Video Help:Multilingual support for Android
Check
The following sections will let you check to see what scripts are installed properly on your device.
Alphabets
Latin: If you're reading this, you already have Latin installed on your device.
Other
Indic
East Asian
Maps Help:Multilingual support for Android
Keyboards
If you plan to use multiple languages in Android, or to edit articles on Wikipedia on foreign languages that require scripts, chances are you will need to install a new keyboard, that can easily switch between settings without forcing you to return to settings. Fortunately, there are several free keyboards available for Android which will allow you to do this.
- AnySoft Keyboard by Menny Even Danan
- MultiLing Keyboard by Han Honso
- MultiLingual Keyboard by Amidos
There are also several other free multilingual keyboards which come with experimental input methods:
- Hacker's Keyboard by Klaus Weidner
Comparison
Comparison of native support and available plugins for each keyboard. Note that not all plugins may work without installing a suitable font.
Fonts
Chances are that your Android device will include Latin, Cyrillic, Arabic and most East-Asian fonts (except Yi), as well as Greek, Thai and Hebrew, meaning that you will be able to read, and once you have a proper keyboard, to write, languages spoken by a majority of the world's population.
However the large majority of the world's scripts are unsupported, including all Indic scripts except Thai (collectively covering India, Sri Lanka, Burma, Cambodia, and Laos as well as Yi, Ge'ez, Thaana, Georgian, Armenian, and Canadian Aboriginal. While all of these alphabets except Burmese have keyboards available, they won't work unless you have the correct fonts.
And many Android devices (such as the Galaxy Tab mentioned above) do not allow you to install fonts, which will make things difficult for you. To install fonts on such devices, you will have to root them, before installing fonts. Detailed rooting instructions can be found here. Keep in mind that rooting your phone will format it, which means that it is very important to back-up your data prior to rooting.
Once your device is open, you will be able to install true-type fonts directly on your device, or use an installer from Android, such as this one for Georgian. Alternatively, you can also copy the font file into /system/fonts folder, then you edit /system/etc/fallback_fonts.xml to make your font work with many Android apps.
Source of article : Wikipedia
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