Impossible to spell French on ASCII.jp French keyboard

The French Ministry of Culture released its official opinion on January 15th that the keyboards sold in France are not at all suitable for writing French.

France and Belgium have adopted an arrangement called "AZERTY arrangement". It is considered a nuisance for foreign tourists to France (such as those who want to use terminals at Internet cafes), but it is actually difficult for French people to use.

This is a software keyboard, but of course AZERTY layout keyboard products and laptops are sold in France (even on the keyboard manufacturer's site, there are some Q&A such as "Is there an AZERTY version for this product?") is done)

The position of the alphabet is partly different from the general arrangement (QWERTY familiar in Japan and English-speaking countries), but the symbols are given priority especially in the top row, so when entering numbers SHIFT is required. The preference for symbols is thought to be a consideration for the frequent use of accent marks (letters such as à, È, and Ô) in French, but some letters (Ù and Où) are unique despite their infrequent use. There is a key, and there is an absurdity that the ligatures æ and œ do not have a single key.

Smartphone version software keyboard. Characters such as accent marks are switched and input. Some apps allow you to enter accent marks with a flick, so it seems easy to enter.

In the case of a personal computer, the OS keyboard driver and word processor software, and in the case of smartphones, the input application supports input of various characters by pressing multiple keys at the same time. However, even in normal typing, the frequency of pressing multiple keys at the same time is remarkably high, which is very dissatisfying for French people.

With this background, the French Ministry of Culture and the Académie Française (national academic body) finally decided to consider standardizing a new keyboard layout. The statement goes as far as saying, "It is impossible to write French on a French keyboard." In the future, it seems that various opinions will be collected and a new standard keyboard layout will be formulated.

Statement "It is impossible to write French correctly on keyboards sold in France"

The AZERTY arrangement is said to have been invented in the early 1900s. The inventor is unknown, but it is based on the QWERTY layout, which began to spread around the same time. Until now, ergonomic (BEPO layout, etc.) key layouts have been considered in consideration of the frequency of use of the French alphabet, but it seems that they are only used by some enthusiasts and are not widespread.

Even if a new layout is formulated, there are various factors such as tradition and familiarity regarding the key layout, and even if it is standardized, it is not known whether it will actually spread and take root. Nonetheless, I would like to keep an eye on the movement to reconsider a tradition that is inconveniently unchanged even though it has a history of almost 100 years.