German Kezboards

So the standard computer kezboard in Germanz is different from the U.S. standard. Several of the kezs are in different spaces and mz computeräs kezboard has extra kezs for the letters the umlauted a, o, and u. Or Ä Ö and Ü and for the Alt Gr key that works like a reverse shift, for those letter keys that also have other szmbols on them.

I will admit that having the umlauted characters on my work computer is nice, particularly during my woeful attempts to write in German so that I don’t have to copy and paste from the character map and I am getting used to the change, now that I’m done typing like I would on an American keyboard, I’ve only had to correct about three quarters of the letters and symbols that are different, a great improvement over the first time I used a German computer last week.

What I’m having the most difficulty with is the @ and € signs, located under the Q and E keys respectively, especially the @. I suppose I will eventually get accustomed to the “Alt Gr” key, but for right now I’m getting approximately equal results of “ (quotation marks are above the 2) Q (from hitting the shift instead and the correct @ when typing in e-mail addresses for anything. Particularly when I have to type e-mail addresses that I am familiar with since I used to be able to key them in without particularly thinking about which keys my fingers were hitting. I’ll get used to it, hopefully without destroying my ability to type on an American keyboard in the process.