SOLVED: How To Use a French Keyboard For English

It’s not just French and English; this article explains how to use any keyboard for any language in Windows 10 and 11.

Short Version:

If you your computer is setup already to use multiple keyboard layouts (and many non-English computers are), the easiest way to change to the language you use is to press ALT + SHIFT (i.e. press and keeping holding down the ALT key and then press the SHIFT key. This will bring up the keyboard selection and you can chose English or French or German or Italian or whatever other language your computer is already setup for.

How To Change Your Keyboard Language:

If you have a multilingual keyboard like the one shown below it very difficult to get slashes, brackets and question marks.

Fortunately you can easily tell Windows 10 / 11 that it is an English keyboard and to ignore the accents and British pound symbols by setting the keyboard mapping.

Click START
Click the cog icon (settings)
Click TIME & LANGUAGE
Select a language from the list in PREFERRED LANGUAGES
Click OPTIONS
Select ADD A KEYBOARD
Select the keyboard layout language you want

If the language you want is not shown in PREFERRED LANGUAGES, you need to add that language first, in LANGUAGE SETTINGS. Also, you can look through keyboard users manuals for other options.

Enjoy!

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View Comments

George Govia says:

October 17, 2023 at 6:06 pm

Hi Ian, I have a Lenovo Thinkpad E14 Gen 2, 20T6002MCA, with French Canadian keyboard with mutiple characters on the number keys (row two). I'm english speaking and have difficulty getting some of the symbols printed. Is there a chart and explanation on how to print each character on the keyboard (can't find the question mark).