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QWERTY vs Turkish F-Keyboard: Which Layout Should You Learn?

Two different design philosophies

QWERTY was never designed around typing speed — its letter placement dates back to early mechanical typewriters and constraints that stopped mattering a century ago. The Turkish F-keyboard (standardized as TS 2117) was designed from scratch around the letter and syllable frequency of the Turkish language, putting the most-used letters on your strongest fingers to reduce finger travel.

On the F-keyboard, the home row reads U İ E A (left hand) and K M L Y (right hand) — nothing like QWERTY’s ASDF/JKL. It’s a genuinely different layout to learn, not a remapped QWERTY.

Does F-keyboard actually type faster for Turkish?

In principle, yes — a layout designed around a language’s actual letter frequency should reduce finger movement for that language compared to a general-purpose layout like Q. In practice, the gap matters far less than which layout you’re already fluent in. A Q-keyboard typist with years of muscle memory will almost always out-type a beginner on F, and vice versa. Layout theory sets a ceiling; practice sets where you actually land under it.

So which one should you learn?

  • If you’re starting from zero and only ever type in Turkish: the F-keyboard has a theoretical edge, and Turkish schools have historically taught it for that reason.
  • If you switch between Turkish and English, or use software and shortcuts designed around Q: the Q-keyboard is the more practical default today — it’s what almost every laptop ships with, what most touch-typing resources assume, and what keyboard shortcuts (Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V and friends) are laid out for.
  • If you already type reasonably fast on one layout: it’s rarely worth switching. The transition period where you’re slower than you were before takes weeks to pay back, and most people never fully make up the difference in daily use.

How to practice either one

Our touch typing lessons include a dedicated F-keyboard home row lesson alongside the standard QWERTY progression, so you can try both and see which one your fingers take to more naturally — without committing to a full course before you know. Whichever you pick, the same rule applies either way: learn proper finger placement before chasing speed, and the rest of the typing lessons build on that foundation regardless of layout.