I did not realize this was a thing until I just switched to AZERTY which… despite being marketed as being “similar” to QWERTY, is still tripping me up
Edit: since this came up twice: I’m switching since I’m relocating to the French-speaking part of the world & I just happened to want to learn the language/culture, so yeah
QWERTZ, which is just the standard layout for Germany. It switches out Y and Z, adds Umlauts and changes the positions of various special characters.
I’m curious, what made you switch to AZERTY?
Belgian AZERTY has the @ on a different key than the French one. No, don’t ask.
Yup… I had a suspicion that the Belgian system will somehow be different, so thankfully I didn’t find this out the hard way. I could have almost bricked my laptop login password that way…
Also it’s the first time I had to use my right hand to type the Alt key which is so trippy
Also QWERTZ, but the Swiss version that has these guys on the umlauts with shift äöü -> àéè
There are two methods:
- You can use caps lock for the capitalized umlauts and caps lock and shift for the capitalized French accented vowels
- You can use the accent buttons and combine with a normal capitalized vowel. For example, the button between ü and enter is the two dots button ¨, so you press two dots, then shift-o and get a capital Ö. Same for the French accented vowels the two buttons on the left of backspace have ´ and ` (with alt-gr and shift respectively) and you can combine those with shift-e for É È.
The second method sounds convoluted, but you get used to combining keys anyway. For example for the circumflex ^ because â ê î ô û don’t exist pre-combined on this keyboard layout. The same goes for some rarer combinations like ï, which despite the dots isn’t a German umlaut, it’s an i with trema for use in French for example in haïr, to hate.
German only really introduced capitalized umlauts for printing around 1900, so people used to use the combinations of the vowel with e for capitalized umlauts in print. Then the first mechanical typewriters again didn’t all have umlauts, or sometimes had only small umlauts. The combinations with e is also used for systems that have technical limitations. If they are ASCII based for example. Therefore even today people are somewhat used to it, so if you were to write Oeffnungszeit instead of Öffnungszeit nobody would bat an eye.
AZERTY is not really about being similar to QWERTY. It’s the French standard keyboard layout.
Similarly QWERTZ is the German standard keyboard layout.
Most (European?) countries use some variation of QWERTY with the symbols and special characters moved around to fit their respective languages better. Over here in the Netherlands we are a bit of an outlier in the sense that we use the US layout of QWERTY, but with additional modifier keys to make special characters available (It’s called US International)
There is also niche layouts like DVORAK (optimized layout for English) and BÉPO (optimized layout for French).
What is the reason you switched to AZERTY, if I may ask? I’m quite curious.
Over here in the Netherlands we are a bit of an outlier in the sense that we use the US layout of QWERTY
Tell that to Microsoft! I remember people using Windows would complain their : turned into ± etc., actually I haven’t heard that in a while now, did they finally fix that or just change the layout switching hotkey to something one doesn’t accidentally press?
I think that finally got fixed several years ago. I do remember this exact problem though…
By default both the Dutch and US International layouts would be enabled if you set up the computer to the Dutch region. And you could switch between them (accidentally) by pressing some key combination. It was highly annoying…
What is the reason you switched to AZERTY
Not OP but I would guess he wants full immersion in a new country with a new language. That’s still not a good idea IMHO. AZERTY is no different than QWERTY (except for a few keys) because you still move and distord your fingers all over the place whether you use one language or the other. I switched to the full “Colemak on US ISO keyboard” and my fingers have no problem writing in French too.
I’ve always wanted to use DVORAK but just don’t have the time to learn something so large and new (to me) at this stage of life. Gotta pick your battles.
Yeah, I remember being really interested in DVORAK when I was younger. But when it comes down to it, my typing speed is not really something that is holding back my productivity, so there is little benefit to be gained from switching.
I use Dvorak on a 36 key Corne.
I started developing Ulnar Tunnel due to having really bad typing form from never learning the correct way to type. I was never going to unlearn the horrible (but fast) typing form that I had been using for years, so I decided to completely relearn how to type from the ground up using a different key layout on a completely different keyboard layout. It was a long and arduous process, but now my wrist pain is completely gone, and my typing speed has recovered.
This Heatmap is why I made the switch to colmak-dh.
I think this makes sense for people who type only in English. If you type in other languages, this becomes way less relevant.
Not to mention the limitations in hardware.
