Windows – Wrong keyboard input language on Windows 8 lock screen

I use a custom international keyboard layout with alt deadkeys, but occasionally Spanish, Portuguese, or Chinese. So I'm kind-of in the same boat as you. Since you are using windows 8, this shouldn't be a problem.

You seem to have a great answer to your question about MocOS-ish keyboard layout switching, you should seriously consider it as an answer because short of changing the operating system itself, that's going to be it I think.

For #3 — that user is wrong about the two being the same. The display language and the input languages are separate by design. You can switch your language for input at will, with win+space to cycle through the list of languages you can configure. You can have the lanauge settings apply system wide for input, or just for the current application. And you can configure the display language to always be different from the input language.

To have the input set to a different language than the display language, click on Advanced settings in the Language Preferences pane that you can get to from the language taskbar notification icon. There, there are two sections:

• Override the Windows Display Language
• Override the default input method

Select your language preference for input method from the second item.

How to Change the Default Language

To change the language settings to the Welcome screen, the default lock screen, do the following:

1. Open the Start screen and type Region.
2. Select Settings as the search area, and
3. Click Region on the left pane.
4. Click Administrative tab.
   
5. Click Copy settings in the Welcome screen and new user accounts group.
   You will see the current settings.
6. Select Welcome screen and system accounts check box and click OK to copy the settings of the current user to the Welcome screen.
   

Since you switched to German language, you have to search for German word Region at step 1.

Alternative way:

1. Click the language on the Taskbar.
2. Then click Language preferences.
   
3. Click Advanced settings on the right.
4. Click Apply language setting to the welcome screen, system accounts, and new user accounts link in the Override for Windows display language group.
   It will open Region settings with Administrative tab selected.
   Follow the steps 5 and 6 from the instructions above.