This might not be very helpful, but I have the swiss-german keyboard layout and it's too quite different from the U.S. layout, like yours. I don't know how to change the keyboard layout, but I only use the U.S., because for navigating and programming in the console it's much better (e.g. you have the / right beneath the shift key). It takes some time to learn it, but once you got it it's better.
Sorry for not having a real solution.