2023-11-12 14:34:14
For the French language, there are a variety of different keyboards… You are probably most familiar with two variants: Belgian AZERTY and French AZERTY. But what are the differences?
The Belgian keyboard and the French keyboard are extremely similar… for most of the keys. For this reason, if your computer is set to the wrong layout, you may not notice it until you need to use a symbol like equals or parenthesis.
Except that it doesn’t stop there, in fact, in France, there are several AZERTY keyboard layouts: one for Windows, one for Mac which is identical to the Belgian keyboard and one for Linux. And if that wasn’t enough, the Windows keyboard has variations…
In Belgium, the Mac and Windows keyboards are more or less the same, while the Linux keyboard is a bit original.
As few of you use Linux, and the Mac keyboards are identical, we will focus on the Windows version.
The arrangement of letters and main punctuation symbols is identical on both keyboards. Except for the exclamation point which is found on the 8 key in Belgium while it is on the § key (which is found in our southern neighbors to the right of the key containing the symbols: and /) in France.
But for secondary punctuation marks and diacritics, it’s a little different. First of all, there is a symbol in the Belgian keyboard that is absent from the French keyboard: the acute accent. Or rather, it is only possible, when writing in France, to display the symbol “é” with your keyboard, and not other symbols using the acute accent: á, í, ó, ú… The French keyboard n It’s not very “Spanish-friendly”…
The differences on “number” keys are almost always on the third character (the one that can be displayed with alt or alt gr). Except of course with regard to the! which therefore exchanges, as specified above, its place with the _, and the §, which is therefore found in France replaced by -.
From 1 to 0, the differences are therefore for the third characters: the | Belgian has no equivalent, the Belgian @ becomes the French ~. On key 4, the French keyboard adds a et l’accent grave prend place en France sur la touche 7. Le belge est remplacé par ^ et le belge par @. Immédiatement après, la touche qui contient dans les deux pays la parenthèse de fin, inclut en France également le symbole ].
Finally, the big changes that will impact you the most if you try to type on a French keyboard are probably the following (if we ignore the ! already mentioned above): the + and the = are located in France on the key which, in Belgium, contains – and _, and is added a third symbol: the .
Finally, and to complete the whole thing, the £µ and *$ keys are upside down with their symbols which even change case (uppercase or lowercase) in passing.
And when we add to this that most of these changes are quite simply arbitrary, we begin to wonder whether good standardization would not be in order! Especially since more and more Dutch speakers are abandoning AZERTY for QWERTY, which is gradually making AZERTY a purely French-speaking keyboard.
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