Can I write in french with an english keyboard layout (Sonoma). I used to be able to do this with my old Mac

Phil0124 wrote:

you may not have access to certain special characters for the language like the accents in French or the ç character.

in fact you should be able to type all the characters you need for French and many other European languages via press and hold and other means. Does that also work for your machine?

Enter characters with accent marks on Mac - Apple Support

Tom Gewecke wrote:

in fact you should be able to type all the characters you need for French and many other European languages via press and hold and other means. Does that also work for your machine?

Enter characters with accent marks on Mac - Apple Support

Yep, the press and hold offers the characters like ç. Forgot about that. Don't know if 100% of them are available, but it should work for most if not all of the characters and accents they may need in French.

Frenelon wrote:

I used to be able to set my old Mac to write in French but keep the English keyboard layout. This was very useful rather than having to learn a new keyboard. I cannot see any way of doing this with my new Mac running on Sonoma.

You should have no problem doing that. What is not working in the note below?

Enter characters with accent marks on Mac - Apple Support

Frenelon wrote:

Previously, I could ask to write in French, maintain an English keyboard layout and get proper French with appropriate accents and spelling.

That sounds like you were relying on autocorrect instead of actually making the french characters yourself. To put autocorrect into French, regardless of what keyboard you want to use, go to system settings > keyboard > text input > edit > spelling and set it to French (not "automatic").

Let us know how well it works. Supposedly autocorrect is always being improved, but whether that's true for a given language you can only tell by testing.

Note that if you are using Word, it has its own spelling settings and does not use Apple's.

Not entirely clear what you mean.

You can write in any language you want while keeping the English layout, but you may not have access to certain special characters for the language like the accents in French or the ç character.

I can just write "Parlez-vouz francaise" for instance, but if I want access to all the accents and special characters I can add the French keyboard input source in System Settings ➜ Keyboard ➜ Input Sources [edit]

And then select it from the Keyboard item in the menu bar can then have access to the correct characters.

"Parlez-vouz française" for example.

Is that what you mean?