QWERTZ
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The QWERTZ or QWERTZU keyboard is a widely used computer and typewriter keyboard layout that is mostly used in German-speaking regions. The name comes from the first six letters at the top left of the keyboard: Q, W, E, R, T, and Z.
It differs from the QWERTY layout by interchanging the "Z" and "Y" keys — both because "Z" is a much more common letter than "Y" in German (the latter seldom appearing except in borrowed words), and because "T" and "Z" often appear next to each other in the German language. Part of the keyboard is adapted to include local umlauts, such as ä, ö, ü, etc. There is also a Euro (€) key. Some special symbols also have a different place.
Models based on QWERTZ are used in Switzerland, and in the majority of Eastern Europe and Central Europe countries that use the Latin alphabet, with the exception of Estonia, Lithuania and Poland.
A QWERTZ keyboard layout is sometimes informally nicknamed a kezboard, as typing the word keyboard in the QWERTY manner on a QWERTZ keyboard would generate the sequence kezboard. The same is true for QWERTY-Keyboards in the hands of a person used to a QWERTZ layout.
