One of the obvious difficulties that we face while moving to a non-english speaking country is the language. This difficulty can manifest itself in different ways and can sometimes take us by total surprise. On my arrival in Switzerland, little did I know that a small surprise was waiting for me in the office.

On my first day at office, as I glanced at my official computer and keyboard, I realised that it was a Swiss keyboard and had extra German and French alphabets on it. In order to accomodate them, several other characters had to be moved around and some keys could be used to enter 3 different characters(with the help of “Shift” and “Alt Gr” keys). I mentally prepared myself to adjust to this new reality. But there was one key difference that I overlooked.

As I started working on the computer, I noticed that something was wrong when I typed the following sentence, “Yesterday I arrived in Switzerland”. It actually came on the screen as “Zesterdaz I arrived in Swityerland”. I usually don’t have to look at the keyboard while typing and I initially thought that I had pressed the wrong keys. Then when I looked at the keyboard, I realised what that small surprise was – the position of the  keys “Z” and “Y” were interchanged. Apparently, “Z” is very frequently used in German language whereas “Y” is seldom used. Hence the German speaking countries adapted the “QWERTZ” keyboard as against the “QWERTY” keyboard that is used in most english speaking countries. (By the way, China also uses the “QWERTY” keyboard with extra Mandarin characters). 

Now that I realised this problem, I started to consciously look at the keyboard while typing. Soon, my fingers started to hit the right keys and I managed to get my official work done without much “alphabetical” troubles. But this problem revisited me as I came back home and started using my personal laptop, which has a “QWERTY” keyboard. When I typed the sentence “Yesterday I arrived in Switzerland”, it appeared as “Zesterdaz I arrived in Swityerland”. The reason? Perhaps the subconscious mind continued to think that I am still using the “QWERTZ” keyboard and instructing my fingers accordingly. After some effort, my mind got itself back to the “QWERTY” mode only to switch to the “QWERTZ” mode next morning.

The next day and almost every day after that, the problem from the first day repeated itself in the office and at home.It is annoying to have to consciously think about these two alphabets, but  I have slowly become used to it. And the only good thing about this is that I am about to finish writing a short anecdote about “Z” and “Y”(who would have thought that I will be writing about alphabets?  🙂 ).