iPhone provides keyboards in multiple languages, and supports the following keyboard formats: English, English (UK), Danish, German, Spanish, Finnish, French, French (Canada), Italian, Japanese QWERTY, Japanese Kana, Korean, Norwegian Bokmål, Dutch, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Russian, Swedish, Chinese (Simplified) Pinyin, Chinese (Simplified) Handwriting, and Chinese (Traditional) Handwriting.

Turn international keyboards on or off:

  1. In Settings, choose General > International > Keyboards.
  2. Turn on the keyboards you want. Languages with more than one keyboard, such as Japanese and Chinese, indicate the number of keyboards available. Tap to choose a keyboard for that language.
Switch keyboards if more than one keyboard is turned on:
Tap to switch keyboards. When you tap the symbol, the name of the newly activated keyboard appears briefly.
Enter Japanese Kana:
Use the Kana keypad to select syllables. For more syllable options, tap the arrow key and select another syllable or word from the window.
Enter Japanese QWERTY:
Use the QWERTY keyboard to input code for Japanese syllables. As you type, suggested syllables appear. Tap the syllable to choose it.
Enter Korean:
Use the 2-Set Korean keyboard to type Hangul letters. To type double consonants or compound vowels, press and hold the letter, then slide to choose the double letter.
Enter Simplified Chinese Pinyin:
Use the QWERTY keyboard to enter Pinyin for Chinese characters. As you type, suggested Chinese characters appear. Tap a character to choose it, or continue entering Pinyin to see more character options.
Enter handwritten Simplified or Traditional Chinese:
Use the touchpad to enter Chinese characters with your finger. As you write character strokes, iPhone recognizes them and shows matching characters in a list, with the closest match at the top. When you choose a character, its related characters appear in the list as additional choices.

When Simplified or Traditional Chinese handwriting formats are turned on, you can enter Chinese characters with your finger, as shown:

Enter Chinese character