Typing accents on a U.S. keyboard

In a comment, Claude asked the question: How do you type accented characters on a U.S. keyboard?

With computers, everything is possible, no? And it's not too hard, once you get used to it. First of all, I use the U.S.-International keyboard layout in Windows. It gives you much easier ways to type accented characters than the standard U.S. keyboard layout does.

With the standard U.S. layout, you have to press the ALT key and type a number code on the numeric keypad on the right side of the keyboard to get accented characters. For example, ALT+0233 on the numeric keypad produces é. ALT+0244 produces ô. And so on. Make sure NumLock is turned on to get this to work.

Thankfully, in Window you can choose the software keyboard layout you want the keys on your hardware keyboard to map to. You install keyboard layouts for different countries and languages using the Regional and Language Options control panel. You can do the same thing on a Mac, but I couldn't tell you the details of how.

At that point, it doesn't matter what letter or symbols appear on the keys on your actual keyboard. The software is in charge. For example, on my new British keyboard the symbol that appears above the 2 on the top row of keys is the double quote, ". But when I type Shift+2 using the U.S.-International layout, I see the @ characters on the screen. It's a little confusing, but it's a small price to pay for having the A, Q, W, Z, and M keys in "the right place" — that is, where I expect them as an American-trained typist, and not where they are positioned on a French keyboard.

For accented characters, the U.S.-International keyboard is set up so that if you type ' and then immediately press E, you see é on the screen. If you press ` and then A, you see à, for example. The same is true with ^, so you can easily type ^ and then O and see ô.

This works with capital letters too: É or Î, for example. The single quote character followed by unshifted or shifted C gives you ç or Ç. And the double quote followed by a vowel gives you the character you need for Citroën, which in French is called a tréma and in English and German is an umlaut.

The only problem you have is in typing a combinations like l'amour or qu'elle in French using this keyboard layout. If you aren't careful, you end up with lámour or quélle on the screen. The way you have to do it is to touch the space bar after the single quote in order to make the quote mark appear on the screen as a separate character. So qu'elle is typed as Q U ' [spacebar] E L L E and l'amour is L ' [spacebar] A etc.

The U.S.-International keyboard layout
Thanks to Wikipedia for the image

I just discovered that the U.S.-International keyboard provides for some accented characters in even easier ways. On this keyboard layout the ALT key on the right side of the spacebar is actually an ALT GR key — I think the GR stands for graphical characters.

If you hold down ALT GR and then press E, you get é. Holding down ALT GR and Shift as you press E gives you É. This works for some other standard accented characters as well. ALT GR + A produces an á. Of course that character doesn't exist in French, but it does in other languages.

The accented characters commonly used in French are:

à â - é è ê ë - î ï - ô - ù û - ç Ç

Does entering accented characters sound complicated? Like many other things, it's not complicated once you learn how to do it.

For Betty who lives in France (where she has three blogs) and is going to spend the summer in the U.S.: could you take a French keyboard with you and install then the French keyboard layout in Windows on your family's PC? Even if you don't actually take a keyboard with you, you can install the French keyboard layout and then treat the U.S. keyboard as if it were a French one, as longa s you are somebody who types without looking at the keys...

My advice: "go native"

Weather bulletin: It's raining again this morning. Now that's out of the way...

I finally got my QWERTY keyboard. What a long wait! I ordered it on June 7. If I had thought it was going to take so long for the local computer store to get it from a supplier, I would just have ordered one from U.K. Amazon. I would have received it a lot sooner.

The French keyboard is called an AZERTY model. The Q and A keys are reversed compared to a U.S. keyboard, as are the W and Z. A lot of other keys, especially keys for punctuation marks and other useful symbols, are in different places too.

The British keyboard now on my desk

Only if you've ever tried to use a French or other non-QWERTY keyboard to type text — e-mails in an Internet café in Paris, for example — will you understand what a big issue this is.

In a way, it all turned out fine despite the much longer than expected wait. One feature of the French keyboard that was giving me a fit was its small Shift key on the left side and the extra key stuck in between the Shift and the Z compared to a U.S. keyboard. That key is the backslash, so every time I wanted to type a capital letter that involved a letter key on the right side of the keyboard, the little finger on my left hand would press what it thought was the Shift key and I would see this on the screen: \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\p

While I waited nearly a month for my QWERTY keyboard, I finally got used to the smaller Shift key. I decided late last week that I didn't really even need a QWERTY keyboard.

I returned to the computer store yesterday (Monday). Actually, my purpose in going there was to tell them that I didn't want the QWERTY keyboard any more. Partly, I was just peeved that it was taking so long. I had found une autre solution, I told the clerk. That's when he said the QWERTY keyboard had come in last Friday.

Despite the fact that I was in the store three times the week before to ask about the delivery date and was told each time that I would get a phone call as soon as my keyboard came in, nobody had called me. The store is open on Saturdays, so it's not like maybe it came in so late on Friday that there was no point in calling me until Monday. I didn't miss the call either — there was just no call to miss.

I asked if I could see the QWERTY keyboard anyway. I was hesitating. What if it turned out to be a nice U.S. model?

It turned out to be British. And the British keyboard has that same tiny Shift key on the left side. Of course, as I said, I'm used to that now.

When I initially ordered the keyboard, I was told it would cost about 20 euros. When I said I wanted it to be black, not beige, the clerk said that "feature" would cost extra. Last week, I priced the keyboards at the SuperU hypermarket in Contres, and they were in the 20- to 50-euro range.

So yesterday, I expected to hear that the selling price of this British keyboard would be 25, 30, or even 40 euros. It is a specialty item in France, remember. And it is black, after all, and thus rare.

I looked at the keyboard and saw that it was a Logitech model. I explained to the clerk the differences between the layout of a British keyboard compared to an American one. His eyes glazed over (as yours surely have by now). I was hesitating about going ahead and paying for it at that point. It all depended on the price.

So I asked. It's eleven euros, he told me. I expected him to quote a much higher price for such a nice black Logitech keyboard. At the low price he did quote, I couldn't say no. So now I have a nice new British keyboard. Of course, it says "Made in China" in small print on the back.

The jackass that lives out back

If you have read this far down in this boring post, you've gotten to the part where I tell you the lesson I've learned. Which is: Adapt. Go local. Go native, as the British so charmingly and pejoratively say. I already had a French keyboard, and the hypermarket shelves are full of them. I had made progress in getting used to using it. And it's no problem to buy one locally, even if they are expensive.

If you want something that is specifically British or American, order it from the U.K. or the U.S. If — and this is a big IF — you can find a company that will ship it to France, that is. Or do without. Imagine how hard it would be to get a French keyboard in the U.S., especially if you lived way out in the country somewhere.

These are the little things that take up a lot of your time and mental energy as an expatriate.

July: plus ça change...

You'll never guess what the weather is like this morning. It's raining! We just saw a rainbow and then came a sudden downpour. It might have stopped raining for the moment. I see rays of sunlight, but you can't trust the treacherous clouds.

Roses in our garden — there aren't as many
now as there were a month ago.

It rained all day yesterday, off and on. We only got 5 mm, or about 0.2", of moisture, but it rained hard at times, while never for long. It rained lightly for much of the day. It was enough to keep us indoors.

The garden is very green. If you enlarge the picture
by clicking on it, you can see red apples on a tree in the
background, and red cherries on a tree on the right.

You are probably tired of reading about this rainy weather by now. So you can imagine how tired we are of experiencing it.

The rain makes it hard to take Callie out for regular walks, which makes her hyper and antsy. She plays by herself, we try to play with her, and several times a day we make a brief foray out into the garden so that she can pee etc.

Dark clouds gathering over the woods and vines

While our tomato and eggplant plants are growing, they are not producing anything yet. Other plants are doing better. Cherries are amazing this year. All the trees are loaded down with them. Most of them are sour cherries around here.

Wildflowers grow out in the vineyard. The ground looks dry,
but that's because it is very rocky.

We have our own cherry tree out back, behind the garden shed. In the four previous years, we have had practically no cherries from it. And the ones we did have were all pit and almost no flesh.

This year, it is loaded with small but fairly plump cherries. I picked enough to fill a big basket on Saturday because I thought they were good to eat. Walt didn't like them, though — he thought they were bitter. So I made jam out of them yesterday.

Red apples on a tree in our garden

We also have loads of apples on our own trees, and I think we are going to have loads of blackberries on all the land surrounding us. Blackberries here don't grow so vigorously as they did where I grew up in North Carolina or where a good friend lives up the the Sierra foothills of California. They don't seem to invade all the land or take over other plants.

Blackberry blossoms and thorns

But this year the blackberry brambles seem to be full of blossoms. If the weather turns warm, as predictions indicate that it will this week, all the blossoms will turn into berries.

Grapes in bunches in the Renaudie winery's vineyard

As for the vineyard, grapes are coming right along. In the Renaudie winery's vineyard out back, there are Cabernet Franc, Sauvignon Blanc, Chenin Blanc, Gamay, Malbec (called Côt here), and Pineau d'Aunis grapes.

These grapes look like they are starting to turn red.

I can't tell the difference between any of them except in the broad categories of white and red, as in the wines they produce. And I can't tell that until the grapes actually start to turn color. They are all green at the beginning.

Our house from out by the pond

Yesterday I cooked fresh spinach and fresh mushrooms. We thawed out a container of tomato sauce that we had made last fall. Walt sliced up some mozzarella and made dough for a pizza crust. Instead of pizzas, he made two calzones. That was a good way to spend a rainy Sunday.

French rules for taking a shower

This week I've been reading the blog of a woman from Tennessee who is spending three weeks studying French in Aix-en-Provence and living with a "family" in that city.

It's interesting to me because my first trip ever to France was a six-month study program in Aix-en-Provence. That was more than 35 years ago. It seems to me that some things haven't changed much, and one has to do with American expectations about what it will be like to "live with a French family."

Here's how Kathy from Tennessee described an incident that had to do with taking her first shower in her landlady's apartment in Aix. Isabelle the landlady had been out the evening before, when her new boarder arrived, so the two hadn't even met yet. The man named Markus was living in the other room that Isabelle rented out to students. He and Kathy were to share the bathroom. Christine is Isabelle's daughter, who was arriving for a visit from overseas.

I went to bed Sunday night before Isabelle and Christine arrived from the airport, and unfortunately my first meeting with Isabelle was not ideal. Markus and I had decided the night before that I would shower at 6:45 and he would shower at 7:15. I was wide awake at 6:15 and decided to go ahead and get my shower out of the way, perhaps around 6:30 am. It never occurred to me that this would be a problem. I was showering away (with a handheld shower attachment), when BANG BANG BANG!!! It was Isabelle. NON, NON, NON!!!! I ended my shower as quickly as possible, put on my clothes, and went out to meet her. I had gotten up too early! I had woken up everyone else! And (worse offense), I had used too much water! I wasn’t supposed to keep the water on non-stop! I was supposed to get myself wet, turn it off, use the soap, turn it on, ecetera, ecetera, all in rapid-fire French. “Je suis désolée!!!” “Pardon, Madame!!” Oh my goodness… I was off to a terrible beginning.

The French have always been very frugal when it comes to using electricity, in my experience, and one of the most electicity-intensive electrical appliances in a house or apartment is the water heater. I learned years ago that the way you take a shower in France is to turn on the water just long enough to get wet and then turn it off again. With the water off, you shampoo your hair and soap up your body. Then you turn the water back on just long enough to rinse off.

I learned to shower that way because an apartment I lived in in Paris in the late 1970s and early 1980s had a very tiny water heater. It held 30 litres, I believe, of hot water. That's just seven or eight gallons. If I left the water running non-stop during my shower, it would be cold before I finished bathing.

Our water heater here at La Renaudière is bigger. It holds 200 litres, or 53 U.S. gallons. I don't know how much water a typical U.S. water heater holds. Here, if Walt and I both take showers and we use a good amount of hot water in the kitchen that day, the hot water runs out.

It runs out because of the way our electrical system, and most electrical system in most French houses, is set up. The water heater is on a special timed circuit that is controlled by the breaker box. The water heater comes on at about 10:30 p.m. when electrical rates go down, and cuts itself off again at about 5:30 when the rates go back up. Water is heated only during night hours, and once you use up all the water in the tank, that's it for the day. Unless, of course, you remember and decide to go down to the circuit breaker panel and flip the switch that turns the water heater on during daylight hours.

It's very ecological and economical, when you think about it. Water gets heated at nighttime rates, which are about half as high as daytime rates. Many days, you don't even need all the hot water in the tank, so what's the point of having the water heater on all day? It's a waste of electricity. And the by-product of generating electricity is pollution and greenhouse gases. Global warming. Climate change. Ecological nightmare scenarios.

French washing machines, and dishwashers also come with timers so that you can program them to run overnight, when electricity is cheaper. That's what we do. And the washing machine and dishwasher heat their own water, so they don't take water out of the water heater tank when they run. The one mystery we haven't solved, however, is why the normal washing cycle takes two hours to complete in France, rather than the 35 or 40 minutes an American washer needs.

So remember this when you come to France and go to take a shower. [1] Get wet, [2] turn off the water, [3] soap up, [4] turn the water back on, and [5] rinse off. That's the drill. Don't keep the water on the whole time you are in the shower. Ça ne se fait pas — it's just not done that way.

Walt says that when he lived in a boarding house in Paris in 1981, he was allowed two showers a week. If he stayed in the bathroom more than 10 minutes at a time, the boarding house owner would come and start banging on the door, telling him his time was up and to hurry up and finish.

Oh, and if you end up with a bathtub that has a shower attachment but no enclosure or curtain, do it this way. Run two or three inches of hot water into the bottom of the tub. Get in, splash around in that, and soap up. Then pull the plug to let the soapy water out and, while still seated, turn the water back on and direct the flow through the shower attachment. Rinse off while seated, being as careful as you can not to spray water all over the bathroom. It's nice to find, when you finish bathing and want to dry off, that you haven't gotten your towel sopping wet while you were showering.