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
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.
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…
Yeah exactly. The key combo was ctrl+shift btw
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.