Qwerty keyboards
 

Does anyone know if qwerty keyboards are largely or entirely confined to anglophone countries? If not, do you know what countries use them?

All I know is that the huge internet place I go to in Paris -- Access Academy has a ton of Querty keyboards available. However, I suspect that is just for the benefit of their many American and UK users.

I know that French and German keyboards are not QWERTY, tho the German board is more similar than the French. I've only seen QWERTY boards in Italy, Netherlands, Belgium, Portugal, Switzerland and so don't know what the "native" board would look like there. As Patrick says, most internet places have a vairety of keyboards and always a QWERTY (in my expiernce).

Our Japanese Office has qwerty.

I think there are qwerty keyboards to be found everywhere, though they may not be the standard. Often people can choose which keyboard they want when buying the computer.
Here in Belgium for example, my home computer is a French azerty keyboard, while the ones at the university are qwerty.

You can (at least with windows) just "change" the keyboard from AZERTY to QWERTY - this is what I do when I need to find all of those pesky French accents....

-Kevin

They had qwerty keyboards in the internet cafes in Spain.

BTW - I'm practically your neighbor - I'm in DC.

Karen

We always find some place to get on the internet (in many countries) and the keyboards seem at least simi-querty -- not totally unfamiliar. However, I have on at least two occasions had to get help finding the symbol for at (@). Not that I'm such a great querty typist -- but that symbol seems strangely hidden on some keyboards.

The scandinavian keyboards are all qwerty but they of course have the special nordic characters øæå and all the special symbols are moved around. In our case you find the @ at Alt Gr + '2' (where Alt Gr is the right Alt key). But as has been said you can tell the machine to use whatever keyboard layout you prefer.

Sindre

As an aside,

The QWERTY keyboard was imposed by the first industrial manufacturer of the typewriter (in the 1890's -- my memory, not Google's). The layout is due to the fact that a salesperson of the times could punch out the slogan "TYPEWRITER" using only the top row of keys.

I had to laugh when Gates & Company decreed that the Dvorak layout should supersede QWERTY since it is "more efficient" -- i.e., the vowels are in prime finger positions. The hubris of that little geek in dismissing the central-nervous-system programming of millions of touch-typists says all you need to know about the "Information Age" gurus.

As kevin-Widrow says, it is possible to set up a keyboard conversion for different languanges, where all you have to do is press ALT + SHIFT together to effect the changeover.

I once did a Russian conversion on my computer - but I had to manually transcribe the layout onto a sheet of paper by working my way through all the keys to see what was what, and so typing Russian was very laborious.

Now I forget how i did the conversion.

Harzer

I've been very interested in this thread on keyboards, since I use internet cafés frequently when traveling in Europe, and I recall having trouble in France the last time I was there (five years ago). I once laboriously composed my e-mail an a French "azerty" keyboard, and when I alluded to this at the desk as I left the internet café, the attendant told me that the computer right behind me had a US keyboard. So lesson one: it pays to ask.

CAUTION: I'M NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY COMPUTER DISASTERS CAUSED BY THIS ADVICE. I wanted to find out more about exactly HOW to change keyboard layouts, and whether you can only do this if the computer has been set up to do so. With a combination of Microsoft Help Files (often not very helpful) and experimentation, I found out some things which I will now pass on to you. Please note: CAUTION: I'm not an expert on this. My computer is running Windows XP Home Edition, Version 5.1, Service Pack 2. Things might be different on older operating systems.

My computer now has a new small square button on the "Start Bar" at the bottom of the screen, on the right side. It holds the letters "EN", and mouse-over shows "English (United States)". If I hit the letter keys in sequence left to right on the four rows of my keyboard, here's what I get"

1234567890-=\
qwertyuiop[]
asdfghjkl;'
zxcvbnm,./

If I click on the "EN" button, I'm offered a choice of either "English (United States)" or "French (France)". If I select the latter, the letters on the button change to "FR". If I then hit the same keys on the keyboard, I now get:

&é"'(-è_çà)=*
azertyuiop^$
qsdfghjklmù
wxcvbn,;:!

So voilà, I've changed to a French keyboard layout! So if you're in an internet café in France, and see a little square at the lower-right that says "FR", click on it, and you can probably change to a US keyboard layout. Then, if you're a touch-typist (as I am), you can enter your e-mail in a familiar way (of course, the labels on the key caps will be wrong).

BUT: when I started, that EN/FR button was not there. This only works if someone has installed the US keyboard driver. In a subsequent post, I'll tell you how I installed the French one.

READ MY PREVIOUS POSTING before you read this one. Let me emphasize again, I'M NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY COMPUTER DISASTERS CAUSED BY THIS ADVICE.

Here's how I added the ability to select a French keyboard layout to my standard US Windows-based computer (Windows XP Home Edition). If you're in an internet café, you should probably consult the people there before doing anything like this:

1. Select "Start" >> "Control Panel"

2. Double-click on "Regional and Language Options"

3. Select the "Languages" tab

4. Under "Text services and input languages", click the "Details..." button.

5. Under "Installed services", you can see the languages available. When I started, mine had only "English (United States) - Keyboard - US". If you don't see the one you want, proceed:

6. Click the "Add..." button.

7. Under "Input language", select the language you want. I selected "French (France)". In Europe, you'd probably want to select "English (United States)".

8. Under "Keyboard layout/IME", select what you want the keyboard to become. I selected "French". In Europe, you'd probably want to select "United States - International" (I THINK!)

9. Hit "OK" three times to close three windows.

10. Close the Control Panel with the "X" at the upper-right.

You should now be able to change your keyboard behavior with the button at the lower-right of the screen, on the Start Bar.

If I've made any errors in the above, or any additional information is needed, please jump right in. As I said, I'm NOT an expert on this.

One more thing: clicking the little button not only offers the two languages (or perhaps more), there is a selection "Show the language bar". If you click on that, the little button at the lower right disappears, and a larger toolbar appears at the upper-right instead. It shows the selected language written out ("EN English (United States)"), and provides other options (Help, Options, Minimize). If you click on "Minimize", the Language Bar disappears, and goes back to a small button at the bottom.

Justretired is completely corrrect in his two last posts, but keep in mind that many internet cafe's don't allow you to do these kind of changes to the operating system/envirement without administrator priviliges. So in some cases the control panel option will not work, simply not be there or give an error message when you try to use it. In that case look for the PC with the american keyboard :)

As a comment to metlc, I do realise that changing keyboard layout is a bad thing, but at a certain point in our future we might simply have to change from a layout created to reduce typing speed on a typewriter to one intended to improve typing speed....even though it will be a big change for some...

Cobos

If you want to change your keyboard to allow French accents, rather than changing it to French as described above, English speaking users would be better to change it to French (Canada) (Canadian Multilingual Standard). Thus instead of getting the azerty keyboard, which can be quite confusing, you keep the qwerty keyboard, and only a few keys are changed for accents. (e.g. / to é, ? to É, ' to è and so forth).

In "Les Français aussi ont un accent" Jean-Benoît Nadeau tells an amuzing story abound encountering an azerty keyboard for the first time in an internet café in Paris.

If you will forgive the hubris of a little geek (and Information Age guru):

I learned qwerty in high school, and had no difficulty whatever absorbing Dvorak in addition twenty years later. I can now type both merely by switching mental gears in a fashion similar to speaking another language. My CWPM in the latter is about 10% faster than in the former.

I truly feel sympathy for anyone whose neuron pathways are etched so deeply that they find it impossible to learn anything else.

Hi, I am typing this on my Swiss computer which has a qwertz keyboard.

We've been blessed with them in Italy and Spain, but not in France.