European Keyboard
Oct 2nd, 2007 by mark
While we were in Germany, Sibylle and I made good use of a small Internet Cafe in Winnenden, the town next to the village where we were staying. The cafe had about a dozen mid-level desktop computers with 15 or 17 inch LCD monitors, and offered miltch kaffee, soft drinks, and beer.
The first time we sat down we discovered that the keyboards were quite a bit different than the English one we are used to in the States. I’m not sure I can remember all the differences, but here is a partial list:
- The “Y” and “Z” keys are swapped in position. Surprisingly many words require either a “Y” or a “Z” in them. Particularly when your web site is yanshin.
- The “@” symbol is not Shift-2, but rather Ctrl-Alt-Q.
- The quote symbol (“) isn’t Shift-tic (‘), but rather Shift-2
- There were a whole slew of German specific characters like ä, ö, ü, , and my favorite, ß.
- All the Germany symbols moved other punctuation keys around turning every day typing into a search-and-peck operation
Except for the viruses infestation on our camera’s memory cards, the Internet Cafe experience was a good one, made all the more interesting by the differences in something as common and ordinary as a keyboard.