Thursday, January 21, 2016

French keyboard

Most of my personal writing of a creative kind (like this blog) is done in English. From time to time, though, I nevertheless have to produce documents in French. So, I've always had to decide upon the preferable kind of keyboard to attach to my Macintosh: either a Querty (for typing in English) or rather an Azerty (for typing in French). Well, I've never hesitated in preferring the Azerty keyboard, which enables me to use English as usual while inserting effortlessly, if need be, all kinds of French-language expressions into my writing. Admittedly, I have to memorize various elementary Macintosh keyboard combinations:


That has always appeared to me as simple. But certain French authorities are starting to complain about the Azerty keyboard as if it were an archaic device that causes huge problems, because it's impossible to use correctly. And they're talking about changing it. To my mind this is a case of typical French egocentricity, which evokes the silly old idea of systematically replacing English technical terms by French equivalents. You might call it a case of Gallic navel-gazing.

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