Sunday, February 20, 2011

French Keyboards vs. Moi

         There are several different ways that I can tell I'm acclimating well to life in France. I can create English lesson plans like a boss, for instance, and I have mastered the heels vs cobblestone dilemma. I own two (faux) leather jackets and a plethora of scarves. The SNCF train website has slowly marched its way to the top of my "Most Frequented Webpages" list. I am coming along nicely, je pense

          Yet another indicator is the fact that when I'm at work, I can now type using a French keyboard. It might not be my usual 110 words-per-minute speed, but it's not so painfully slow that I want to kill myself, like when I first arrived and realized with dismay that all of the important keys are mixed around. I can't decide if it's more annoying that the "a" and the "q" are swapped, or that the period key is off in the middle of nowhere, and that it's the secondary function of that key. You have to press shift if you want a period. Because no one uses periods, in France, I take it. 

          But look at all the weird symbols they have!    §§§ °  ² µ  ¤

          It's like the keyboard expects me to do math at any moment. I'm afraid it will be sorely disappointed.

A friendly animal of the rain forest accurately describing my feelings towards math.

7 comments:

  1. hehe. i hate french keyboards! and i am dying for a faux leather coat :)

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  2. I hate that the comma is where the M should be!! It's horrible.

    The worst thing is now if I think about having to type instead of just typing, my fingers will move around as if I'm on a French keyboard when I'm AT HOME.

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  3. French keyboards are the bane of my existence at work. I'm trying to navigate you tube videos about phonics and instead end up searching something completely different. Argh!

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  4. Hahaha - I hate using French keyboards - I mean seriously, you have to press shift to get a full stop - which you use at the end of every sentence - WTF?? French logic baffles me sometimes.

    Also - You've won a Stylish Blogger Award - details over on my blog.

    xx B

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  5. my gosh I love your blog! this one exactly resembles my feelings towards the French keyboard LOL! I am typing on it now and whenever I go back to my keyboard I always mess up. It seems that I am more comfortable on a French keyboard instead of American!

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  6. There is not a single part of the article I disagree with. (Yay, double negatives!)

    Take it from a native Frenchie who dabbles in programming: You can't even do basic French stuff like accented capitals and you need three buttons to get basic programming staples (say, brackets) to come out. AZERTY keyboards are horrible for anything that isn't...scratch that, they're horrible, period.

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