Re: What does English mean?

["Rikke D . Giles" <rgiles kendaco telebyte com>]

On 2001.09.04 02:54 Pawel Salek wrote:
> Brian Stafford wrote:
> > 
> > >From the ChangeLog
> > 
> >         * src/sendmsg-window.c: some people believe English means
> American
> >         English.
> > 
> > I really don't want to come across as xenophobic here, but if the
> Americans
> > speak "English" what is the name of the dialect spoken in England?
> 
> I share your feelings but I ws told that that languague choice
> "English" should default to "en_US". Redhat - for what it is worth -
> added this patch on top of 1.1.7 as well. I will be happy to revert to
> the old value if I have some at least semi-good reason for it
> ("English" and "american english" choices sound good to me).
> 
> Other opinions?

Hi,

This does come across as xenophobic.  I'd imagine Redhat put this into
their distribution because more people (in numbers) might expect 'English'
to mean American English, and wished to clear up any possible mistakes if
this happened.  Even more people would probably not understand that there
is much of a difference.  I don't really care what the default is, just
make sure that it's obvious.  If you default to En_GB at least make it
clear that this isn't what your average dipsy North American expects as
English, or your average dispy South Seas Islander, who only knows
'English' from Americans, for example.

And no, I don't really care one way or the other, as long as it's clear.

Rikke