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?
this post was submitted on 11 Apr 2025
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Moving to Belgium for a new job so...
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
Well, when you aren't shackled to your new keyboard, be sure to enjoy our beers, french fries and chocolates, they are truly unmatched anywhere!
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.
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.
Typing speed isn't the only benefit to switching. Reduced finger and wrist movement have been a life saver for me
Yeah. If people stopped bugging me at work my productivity would 2x for sure.
Meanwhile my 110wpm on QWERTY is not exactly holding me back.
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.
Standard US Dvorak, but with the modification of using Caps Lock as Compose key so that I can type øæåØÆÅ when I need to.
I made the switch in 2011, but I nevwr bought into the typing-speed claim. Typing speed be damned, it's just so much more comfortable this way.
Background:
I grew up with scandinavian keyboard layout in the 90s, but then two things happened almost at the same time:
- I fucked up my msdos config, resulting in me having to use the default US layout
- I became interested in coding.
It didn't take long to notice how much better US layout is once you need access to {, }, and @, so I became familiar with it. For a long time I swapped bac and forth depending on what I was doing. Then one day around the time when Walter White blew up Gustavo Fring it dawned on me out of the blue that qwerty was somewhat cumbersome, and I would most likely be using a keyboard recreationally and professionally for the rest of my life, so I might as well try to see if I could get used to something more comfortable.
Downside: Took me a while to get used to it. 6 months or so. A little more than that and my typing speed was up to what it used to be.
Upsides: More comfortable, Nobody wants to borrow my computer, and shoulder surfers have NFI what my password is based on what I'm typing.
Settled on it after 2 years of Dvorak, 1 year of Colemak, and 1 month of Workman.
Though, I mainly use Plover stenography when I'm working, Norman for gaming, and Qwerty on mobile or as-needed (e.g. other people's computers or while taking notes on my iPad for D&D)
QWERTZ because I've been living my whole life in Austria and this was always the default. Every time something is set to QWERTY (and my keyboard is still physically QWERTZ), I have no idea where most of the special characters are and have to mash the keyboard in order to find them. I know @ is shift-2 and / is to the left of the right shift key, but most of the others, uh...
I retrained myself in Dvorak many years back, and really enjoyed using it much better than QWERTY. I had to revert back to qwerty because of commercial standardizations/limitations at different workplaces, unfortunately.
All that to say that workman layout seems even better after reading that article. I don't really see myself making the effort to switch again, but I enjoyed reading about it. Thanks for sharing.
I've been using Dvorak for maybe like 5 years now. There's like a 2 or 3 day period whenever you're learning a new keyboard layout in which you can't type at all lmao. QWERTY or Dvorak or whatever. Just takes a bit for your brain to adjust.
The interesting thing is tho, if I sit down at a computer I don't use every day and start typing, I can type QWERTY no problem, but if I ever have to type QWERTY on my personal computer (lookin at you RDP), its really hard.
I've been meaning to try out a Colemak layout, since it tries to keep a lot of the common computer shortcuts in the same place. (Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V on Dvorak are in kind of an odd place and its a pain if you ever need to use them 1 handed, like if you're holding a tablet pen)
How long did it take you to get back up to your old speed? It took me 1-3 mo. after switching. I think it helped that I used to look at the keys and when I converted I learned 100% touch typing.
about 1 month maybe to get back to full speed? I never really measured my typing speed before or right after switching so I don't really know. I think nowadays i can type faster in Dvorak than I ever could in QWERTY, but thats probably just from using it a lot and generally needing to type more nowadays lol.
I went from 40-45wpm on Qwerty to 65-75wpm on Dvorak, but after I stopped practicing, I settled somewhere in the high 50s low 60s. I specifically measured because I wanted to be able to quantify the changes. Speed wasn't my only concern, but it's the biggest change. There's no need to learn an alternative layout, but even people who don't may benefit from a small adjustment like making caps lock a left backspace and learning to touch type. In retrospect, I would consider more of the alternative layouts before jumping to Dvorak, but I don't regret it at all, even at work or with games.
QWERTZ. Like QWERTY, but Y and Z exchanged, and some extra letters. Biggest difference to an English keyboard are the non alphabethical, non numerical characters. In comparison, they are all in different places.
Moved from AZERTY to QWERTY last year
I don't use it, but Slovak QWERTZ is the standard in my country. But using it feels like a pain in the ass (for me). Some characters need ctrl+alt rather than just shift, others may only be written with alt codes, at least on Windows...
Part of my graduation exam was literally to just type \ % @ & on a computer. Thankfully for me, settings wasn't blocked, so I just added US layout.
If I need some slovak characters I do either one of the following:
- Say "fuck it" and write it without diacritics ("like SMS")
- If needed in forms, use KCharSelect
- Smartphone virtual keyboard
- Like 1 but printed on paper with diacritics added using a pen
- Write it in English even if I am not supposed to and wait for the outcome
- Write it in English, pipe it to Google Translate (I find writing in English mostly easier anyway - doesn't mean I am good at it)
- Write it in English, (attempt to) translate it myself
- Good ol' pen 'n paper all the way (I mean, I've got a fountain pen too)
have you tried the eurokey layout? At least for German it has all the relevant characters easily reachable.
AZERTY Belgian, Flemish style
For Chinese (10 key) and Japanese (kana)I use a 3x3 on my phone. Very common for Japanese but difficult to learn, maybe less common in Chinese over standard qwerty.
I am moving from AZERTY to bépo with futo keyboard but i want to try ergo-l
Non-qwerty trips me up too x3.. I considered using ąžerty before cause certain symbols can be annoying with qwerty in my language, since you need to hit 3 buttons
Dvorak. My fourth year of college I found myself with some time and decided to finally learn to touch-type. No regrets, I love it.
I've been slowly, and I mean slowly, trying to pick up steno. I get the occasional moment where I go super quick, but mostly it's just 1-10wpm at the moment. When I actually want to get stuff done I switch to QWERTY
I have a fully custom keyboard layout on my split ergo keyboard, makes it really hard to work on somebody else's machine!
Now I'm wondering if other typing layouts are better or worse for people who use swype, swiftkey etc. Maybe those need character separation to function best?
Correct.
Dvorak with caps lock as a dead key here. No programmer's Dvorak despite being a programmer... Never quite made the leap
Ortholinear Dvorak.
Since I'm German I used to exclusively use qwertz, but now I use both qwertz and qwerty with qwerty being my main when docked.
Colemak-DH on a Corne (42, chocs).
Hello [email protected] :)
Been eyeing graphite though. Might make the switch over the summer when there is less workload.
Not quite the same thing, but I really don't like the ISO (International, what a lot of European use) QWERTY layout compared to the US one. It's not unusable or anything, but...
I wish that ISO would make some new layout that starts from the layout from US ANSI and then stuffs the European-specific symbols somewhere on the keyboard.
And while I'm dreaming, I'd like that layout to physically swap left control and Caps Lock, so that I don't have to go swapping it in software everywhere.
And to get rid of Menu and Right Windows and replace it with Compose which is, I think, by far the most-preferable way to get access to a substantial additional number of characters. AltGr or Option permits for a small number of additional characters and is harder to remember for occasional use. The Windows Alt-numpad scheme is also much harder to remember, as is the GTK Control-shift-u convention.
I also don't use right Control, but I can believe that somewhere out there, someone gets actual use out of it and needs it somewhere comfortable, so I won't complain about that.
Actually, what I really want, which would solve the above in an even better fashion, is for laptops to use modular, standardized, replaceable keyboards so that I can just buy whatever keyboard I want and slap it on the thing. With external keyboards, as on desktops, the selection is much better.
EDIT: I'd also add that I've seen numerous European users saying that they also prefer the US ANSI layout over the ISO layout, so it's not just me being US-centric, and OP has a comment even saying so themselves in this thread. But if you just use stock US ANSI, then you don't directly get access to the extended Latin set, which you want in Europe. Though Compose can do that, and OP is, like me, also wanting Compose on his keyboard...
ISO-QWERTZ is a thing. Same for other flavors of the ISO european style.
There's a variant of AZERTY devised by the AFNOR ( french standardisation agency) that improves on a lot of ways on the legacy AZERTY, by grouping accents, parentheses, quote marks, etc. and making keys combinations a lot less common. It would be quite easier to learn than standard AZERTY, and it's quite easy to learn for regular AZERTY users too. Unfortunately, it's almost impossible to find a keyboard or even keycaps with the corresponding markings. Drivers are available by following the link if you want to try it for yourself.
It looks like this :
As for myself, I touch type in French on a QWERTY keyboard with an AZERTY letters layout, because even legacy AZERTY keycaps are not that common, and neither are ISO enthusiast segment keyboards.
Some cursed variant of dvorak with both common programming symbols and the local extra letters on accessible keys.
I switched because I got tired of the {}[] being on alt+gr combinations on the Nordic qwerty
I use EurKey, it's neat when you occasionally need special umlauts. https://eurkey.steffen.bruentjen.eu/
I use "US International with AltGr dead keys". I'm most used to the US layout, and I need to type in other languages, so this layout works perfectly. I've gotten used to it enough that I just use this layout on every keyboard regardless of what the keyboards say on their keys. The hardest was probably using this layout on on an AZERTY keyboard, I'd often forget where keys were, but it worked well enough.