The Letters of Language

Well, I can't say much today or show any pictures because the wireless internet in the apartment is not working. At least we do have a computer lab in the basement where I can type this message. Just another part of the ongoing struggle with French technology.

Perhaps this does give me an opportunity to reflect on one thing since it's literally on my fingertips right now: French keyboards are different from those in the US. It's a small set of differences, but just enough to slow down my typing. It turns me from a pretty fast typer into something of a hunt-and-peck typer, just by moving a few keys around.

For instance, the center row of keys on a French keyboard is qsdfjklm -- rather than asdfjkl; -- so when I need the letter a, I often get the letter q because it's in the place where the a is on a US keyboard. Punctuation is in different places too, and you have to use the shift key to make a period. In the internet age, the @ sign is very important, but on a French keyboard, you have to use Ctrl-Alt-0 (excpet that it's not really the 0 key since all numbers must be made using a shift).

And of course they have keys we don't have, in particular letters with accents: é and è and à are all in the top row of symbol keys, except that you don't have to use shift to make them.

Funny how a few keys in a different place makes for a different linguistic experience in something as basic as typing.