I want to like Duolingo more but I don't understand how you can work your way through the course if your keyboard doesn't have foreign characters on it. I tried to get into learning Russian briefly but gave up on the first 20 minutes as I kept failing the tasks that requires me to type Russian characters.
a) You don't have to type Russian characters. There's a little switch that lets you input everything in English transliteration. b) There's an explanation right at the beginning on how to install a Russian keyboard layout: https://www.duolingo.com/comment/11449014
Was I doing it wrong?