SOLVED What is the difference between french and english keyboard?

[patel67]

I know this might be a stupid question, but what is the difference between french and english keyboard? Don't they have the same letters on them?
I want to purchase a MacBook and it says that it has a french keyboard, can I change it or something?

 

[Lufbrarunner]

French layout is AZERTY layout. The AZERTY layout is used in France, Belgium and some African countries. It differs from the QWERTY layout thus:



§ A and Q are swapped,


§ Z and W are swapped,


§ M is moved to the right of L (where colon/semicolon is on a US keyboard),


§ The digits 0 to 9 are on the same keys, but to be typed the shift key must be pressed. The unshifted positions are used for accented characters,


§ Caps lock is replaced by Shift lock, thus affects non-letter keys as well. But there is an evolution going towards a Caps lock key instead of a Shift lock.

 

[TonyAguila]

I know this might be a stupid question, but what is the difference between french and english keyboard? Don't they have the same letters on them?
I want to purchase a MacBook and it says that it has a french keyboard, can I change it or something?

Are you talking about the physical keyboard layout, or just the system settings layout? You can always change and switch back and forth between different layouts and you can simply pull down the keyboard layout menu item to “Show Keyboard Viewer.” Not sure about the availability of the physical keyboard as an option, but you can check at the Apple Store (physical or online) as to availability. If you do use the French keyboard layout much more than the default, then getting the “real” keyboard might be a good idea, except when it comes time to sell or give away the MacBook in future, except in France, of course.

If you want to just see the differences in the layouts, you can load the French keyboard in settings and inspect the key positions using the menu selection to view them.

 

[patel67]

Thank you both! Apparently it was used by some french dude, and it had something like a cover over the keyboard layout, which can be removed easily, thus making it a french keyboard. Pretty strange but whatever. it's in french but i will let my son reset it.