# qwerty in other languages **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [February 6, 2006, 8:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/qwerty-in-other-languages/343216 "2006-02-06T08:49:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2006, 8:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/qwerty-in-other-languages/343216/1 "2006-02-06T08:49:25Z")
We call the common keyboard used in English-speaking countries the qwerty keyboard, based on the first six letters of the top row. Via Wikipedia, I found that cetain other languages have slightly different keyboards: qwertz German azerty French[sup]1[/sup] qzerty Italian How about other languages? What do Spanish, Portuguese, Danish, Polish, Turkish, etc. speakers use? Also, how many different alphabets do they make keyboards for? Do they make them for Cyrillic, Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, and other alphabets? [sup]1[/sup] Why did the French move the very common letter A up to the end of the top row where it’s so hard to get to? ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2006, 8:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/qwerty-in-other-languages/343216/2 "2006-02-06T08:56:10Z")
/'פםןוטארק ףךלחיעכגדש, ץתצמנהבסז. Everything else is the same, although as Hebrew has no capital letters, shift or caps lock gives you Latin caps. ---
**Author:** ![Hostile\_Dialect](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e495f1/32.png) [@Hostile\_Dialect](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hostile_Dialect)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2006, 9:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/qwerty-in-other-languages/343216/3 "2006-02-06T09:01:57Z")
Spanish-language keyboards put the n with the squiggle on top–the seperate letter that makes the “ni” sound in English “onion”–to the immediate right of the L. ---
**Author:** ![cckerberos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f0a364/32.png) [@cckerberos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cckerberos)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2006, 9:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/qwerty-in-other-languages/343216/4 "2006-02-06T09:11:01Z")
Japanese keyboards look like [this](http://www.engr.uiuc.edu/international-StudentExperience/AsiaExperience/JapanExperience/GokliPfister_Hiroshima_Su02/stefan/images/108-0875_IMG.jpg). I don’t think I’ve ever actually met someone who actually used the kana symbols on the keyboard, though; everyone types in romanized Japanese instead. The biggest practical difference is the moving of a number of punctuation marks… having to hit Shift-7 to get an apostrophe can be annoying. ---
**Author:** ![Sleel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/73ab20/32.png) [@Sleel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sleel)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2006, 9:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/qwerty-in-other-languages/343216/5 "2006-02-06T09:55:40Z")
> [@cckerberos](#): > > I don’t think I’ve ever actually met someone who actually used the kana symbols on the keyboard, though; everyone types in romanized Japanese instead. The biggest practical difference is the moving of a number of punctuation marks… having to hit Shift-7 to get an apostrophe can be annoying. Yeah, that’s just a holdover from typewriter days when the only way to use one was to type everything in kana. Only really old farts, the kind who wouldn’t know how to turn a computer on, would have learned how to type using that layout. The punctuation movement really ticks me off, especially since it doesn’t seem to have any practical reason whatsoever. ---
**Author:** ![Mops](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mops/32/16494_2.png) [@Mops](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mops)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2006, 9:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/qwerty-in-other-languages/343216/6 "2006-02-06T09:56:44Z")
> [@dtilque](#): > > We call the common keyboard used in English-speaking countries the qwerty keyboard, based on the first six letters of the top row. … The other posters have answered re key assignments in other languages. I’d like to add that the commonly used _names_ of these keyboard assignments aren’t necessarily analogs of “qwerty keyboard”. This not the case e.g. in German where the key assignment is **qwertz** but we usually refer to a **German keyboard** (or to a **typewriter keyboard** when contrasted to a abcdef keyboard as found on some calculators, control systems etc.). ---
**Author:** ![naita](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/naita/32/5862_2.png) [@naita](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/naita)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2006, 10:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/qwerty-in-other-languages/343216/7 "2006-02-06T10:18:00Z")
A Norwegian keyboard is qwerty, but we add the Norwegian/Danish letters at the right, uiopå jkløæ and rearrange the various symbols and punctuation. ---
**Author:** ![Reply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/reply/32/15952_2.png) [@Reply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reply)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2006, 12:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/qwerty-in-other-languages/343216/8 "2006-02-06T12:45:23Z")
Wikipedia has an [article on Keyboard layouts](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyboard_layout) with graphics for a lot of different types. IBM offers [a more complete list](http://www-306.ibm.com/software/globalization/topics/keyboards/registry_index.jsp), but you have to click on each language individually to see the images. ---
**Author:** ![China\_Guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/779978/32.png) [@China\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/China_Guy)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2006, 12:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/qwerty-in-other-languages/343216/9 "2006-02-06T12:59:35Z")
Here’s a Taiwan based Zhu Yin Fu Hao keyboard [http://www-306.ibm.com/software/globalization/topics/keyboards/KBD467.jsp](http://www-306.ibm.com/software/globalization/topics/keyboards/KBD467.jsp) It’s amazingly fast for people that know how to use them to type traditional Chinese characters.