In March of 2020, I have stuck 1500 miles away from my family and friends in a new city where I went for my first job. Not more than 15 days after I went there the lockdown started and before I could come back all the means of interstate commutes were banned. Leaving the home for the first time is difficult in itself to add to it the unpredictability of the COVID situation and the things seem even worse.
But Kudos to technology, because it did, made it easier for me and millions of others to cope up and handle the situation a little better. I would have regular conversations with my close ones via videos calls, calls, and chats. But you do miss home. Being a Bengali the most I miss was homemade food and talking to people in my native language. A lot of apps helped me during the pandemic. And I am going to create a whole list of them soon but this article is about one app that played a small but vital role in making me feel a little closer to home.
I know there is no need for shadowing since you have read the Title already but the app is a part of my narrative so bear with me a little while.
So since I was alone in a room in a girls hostel for three months, I did many things. I did online courses, learned how to cook with minimum utensils, read books, and even learned how to chat in my beloved Bengali with ease.
Although I was quite fluent in speaking Bengali writing the language was never a strong point for me. Typing was more difficult. So I tried a bunch of different apps during those three months.
I started with the standard GBoard Bengali Keyboard, and although the app was fast and good for someone who is fluent with typing or at least has writing experience, I had my difficulties. This article is about one app that I loved but I will share similar apps that you might find to suit your needs. If you want to get to those app simply scroll down to the end of the article.
So now we come to the Bangla Keyboard App for Android that was my absolute favourite.
One of the most important reasons I like this Bengali Keyboard App is because of its understanding of Bengali Accent paired with its amazing voice to text feature. All I do is say what I want to type in Bengali and keyboard does the typing for me. It even translates what you type in English to Bangla and that translation is quite correct as well which was the main problem I face with other Bengali Keyboard Apps.
Although typing is the main feature of these keyboards it is not the only feature that makes it my favourite. I liked how customizable the keyboard is in itself with respect to settings and also its ability to make the conversation more personalizable and interesting.
Let us first see how the Bangla Keyboard app is extremely customizable. In addition to its customizable theme feature which lets you set any of your pictures as the keyboard’s theme, there are other features like setting the level of vibration or selecting the level of spell-check. It even allows you to choose the height of the keyboard, allows you to set key borders, and choose whether you want to enable features like auto-correct, spell-check, and auto-suggest.
Now let us discuss how it makes your conversation more personalized. Since you will be chatting in Bengali there is already some personal touch, but with its avatar creation feature, you can make stickers that will have your animated head on them. The keyboard comes with a plethora of funny sticker templates that available on a bunch of themes. Just click a picture and make an avatar. In addition to that, you can also add text to the stickers in Bengali or in English.
It is a highly recommended app as you just saw a whole article on it. Now before I leave let me give you names of those other keyboard apps that I liked.
Bangla Keyboard 2020 By JetBox – I used it for 10 days and I like the text to feature. Since I do not talk with everyone in Bengali I also switch to the English keyboard. At first, the English Keyboard was working fine but later on, some of the letters stopped working at once. It might have been a bug so you can check out if they have a new update or something.
Bangla Keyboard By Desh Keyboard – I used this one for about a month and like how fast and smart it with its translation feature. But the problem was my WhatsApp started to hang a lot while using it. Also, I love my stickers and visuals so I went with the other keyboard I boasted about.