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This blog is written in en-GB

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Re: This blog is written in en-GB

#311

Post by dgellow »

hibbelig wrote: post #265
dgellow wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm using custom en-CH locales, because I want numbers to use the Swiss format for decimal and thousands, € instead of CHF, standard units, and some version of English :p

How's that going with the numbers? Microsoft had this page where they explained that monetary amounts are formatted one way whereas other numbers are formatted another way. I found that most fascinating, but I don't know whether it matches reality. Also, how does software cope? (Back in the eighties,) I had a teacher who taught both French and geography (I think), and he used the apostrophe as the thousands separator…

1'234'567.890 :)

One billion, two-hundred thirty-four million, five-hundred sixty-seven (the rest are the decimals)

I've never seen 3'' but that's a nice shorthand

I now live in Germany where the format is confusing to me: 1.234.567,890. It's pretty much the opposite of English format!

Re: This blog is written in en-GB

#312

Post by [deleted] »

My_Name wrote: post #264
r3trohack3r wrote: post #172

I can’t say I understand this new current of culture/writing. It’s something like: get angry, turn small acts into grand acts of social defiance, and signal your social ingroup by referencing other things we are angry about. “Do you remember that JK Rowling lady we all hate because she’s an evil witch? Haha, yeah. Anyways, I’m British and I’m going to keep writing like I’m British.” Edit: I agree with the thesis. You…

You seem to be unaware of one of the British idioms used in language, it's called "A joke". Calling her 'the wicked with of the terfs' was one of those. I found it quite funny personally. I can find the joke funny despite my opinion of Rowling as a person or her statements on particular topics. Sometimes, here in the UK, we make jokes featuring people because the joke is funny, not just to virtue signal. Here in the…

[deleted]

Re: This blog is written in en-GB

#313

Post by graypegg »

Have you ever played runescape? As a kid, I was obviously a little confused initially by NPCs referring to "the first floor" of a castle/shop/etc meaning "the floor above the entry level", but it wasn't THAT hard for a 12 year old to contextualize "ah yes, this is a British game so it's a little different". (Admittedly growing up with british parents in Canada probably helped with understanding a bit, but I still don't think simply being aware of a few cultural differences to be impressive for anyone.)

If english speaking adult-aged people, with a wealth of opportunities to meet people and explore the world, are genuinely befuddled by en-GB to the point where they have to ask you to "translate" it, that's immensely embarrassing for them.

Re: This blog is written in en-GB

#314

Post by dgellow »

drnick1 wrote: post #269
dgellow wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really want to see a local Euro English[0] develop as an actual, recognized variant of English. Both because it would be really funny, but also as a way for Continental Europe to develop a common language we can shape our own way 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euro_English (we don't have to take the examples in this page as-is, we can definitely make better local oddities!)

I did not know "Euro English" was a thing. By the look of it, it isn't a language, it's just a euphemism for incorrect English as spoken by non-native speakers in Europe.

That's how a local language starts

Re: This blog is written in en-GB

#315

Post by chrismorgan »

delta_p_delta_x wrote: post #154
prima-facie wrote: post #149

If you are from Europe, even if you're not living in the UK, the en-GB locale will feel a lot more familiar to you than the en-US one. It uses the dd-mm-yyyy date format like the rest of Europe, the start of the week is on Monday (vs Sunday in the US), the default paper size is A4 (vs US letter), measurement defaults are metric (indeed UK roads use imperial, but the default is otherwise metric), the time format uses…

Not to mention the fact that English basically everywhere else but the US is essentially en-GB with a few choice changes and anachronisms. Consider en-IN, en-IE, en-SG, en-MY, en-AU, en-NZ, etc.

I started writing something a while ago with preliminary title “Do en and en-US, not en and en-GB”.

If you cluster English dialects by various characteristics, you’ll end up with en-US as a clear outlier. I believe that, if you’re going to divide English into two camps, the best is “English (International)” and “English (US)”. Canadian English is the one that’s closest to US English, but even it works at least as well based on International English as regards spelling (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_and_British_English_s... is an interesting read).

But there’s a lot more to it than spelling, and here the distinction is even clearer: the US has its own length, area, volume, weight and temperature units that no one else uses; its own stupid date format that everyone else loathes; its own paper sizes that no one else knows what to do with.

Not everyone else agrees on which date format to use, but we do all agree that any of our formats (DD/MM/YY, DD-MM-YYYY, YYYY-MM-DD, &c.) are better than the US’s middle-endian monstrosity. Though if we see the likes of DD/MM/YYYY we may mistrust whether it’s actually MM/DD/YYYY.

I also believe that you should default to English (International) for all users geolocated outside the USA.

Once you’ve get this divide right, adding further dialects also probably becomes quite a bit easier. But I do wish for diamond inheritance of locales: so you can mix in -ise/-ize, -yse/-yze, -re/-er, -ence/-ense, program/programme, and thereby deduplicate a fair bit across locales.

(There are still plenty of differences: such as time formats; decimal/grouping separators though I believe all places where English is a main language use . for decimal and , for grouping; even number grouping varies: en-IN does 1,23,45,678 rather than 12,345,678; keyboard layout; word choices; and lots more.)

(One last point: the naming is a bit fiddly. “Spanish (International)” means Spanish as used outside Spain. “English (International)” means the broad international/non-US consensus of what English is, generally following what England does but probably with kilometres instead of miles for long distances.)

Re: This blog is written in en-GB

#316

Post by dgellow »

Vinnl wrote: post #228
dgellow wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really want to see a local Euro English[0] develop as an actual, recognized variant of English. Both because it would be really funny, but also as a way for Continental Europe to develop a common language we can shape our own way 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euro_English (we don't have to take the examples in this page as-is, we can definitely make better local oddities!)

I think it's a bit quick to want that variant to be actual already, but eventual we might be able to make it work.

well done, took me a bit to notice :)

Re: This blog is written in en-GB

#317

Post by dgellow »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #275
dgellow wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

given English evolved from Norman French, it's maybe just a local variation than a true invention? fr-GB feels more correct :)

This is more or less completely false. English has an unusually high number of loan words from French (on the order of 10k or so, I think), and this has made the language less Germanic than its historical origins would suggest. But English existed before Norman French arrived in the British Isles, and is still at heart a Germanic language.

Did you actually think I wanted fr-GB to replace en-GB?

It was a joke based on the Norman French references from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_English

Re: This blog is written in en-GB

#318

Post by Telaneo »

Language is very personal. It's very reasonable to want to write in a way that feels natural to you, without constantly having to rephrase or simplify.

Surely most turns of phrase and references are easily googleable these days anyway, so it's not like it's even that hard to figure out. And if it is, you can do this amazing thing called 'asking'. I doubt the author will be mad that you want to know exactly what they meant when they wrote what they wrote.

Re: This blog is written in en-GB

#319

Post by prewett »

rkangel wrote: post #282
biofox wrote: post #28

I am the only Brit in the department I work in. No one gets the cultural references or British idioms I use, and I've found myself significantly changing the language I use to a very utilitarian and direct style to prevent the endless blank stares... reading this blog post just made me realise that this self-editing has made my interactions rather more 'flat' and unnatural, as they now lack spontaneity, with everythi…

I worked in a US office for a while (but with a few other British people as well). I didn't feel the need to edit my sense of humour luckily, but I purposefully switched to saying things like "sidewalk", "elevator" and "bathroom" because it made interactions a lot easier.

I'm American, but I've said "washroom" for a long time because I'm not asking to take a bash, but at least I wash at some point afterwards. Most people seem to understand fine, but I do get a few now and then.

Funny story, I was visiting Hong Kong one time, and asked the young waiter, who seemed to speak English just fine, where the washroom was. Blank stare. Bathroom? Cesuo (Mandarin)? All blank stares. I was a little out of options at that point... Turned out the word I was looking for was "toilet", which is a word I never use.

Re: This blog is written in en-GB

#320

Post by sneak »

dhosek wrote: post #244
prima-facie wrote: post #149

If you are from Europe, even if you're not living in the UK, the en-GB locale will feel a lot more familiar to you than the en-US one. It uses the dd-mm-yyyy date format like the rest of Europe, the start of the week is on Monday (vs Sunday in the US), the default paper size is A4 (vs US letter), measurement defaults are metric (indeed UK roads use imperial, but the default is otherwise metric), the time format uses…

In earlier versions of OS X, setting your date format to have the day before the month was sufficient to also alter the default paper size to A4, which was really inconvenient for me since I prefer the day-month ordering (and as a consequence of buying a digital watch in the Netherlands which only had instructions in Dutch which I didn’t understand, I developed the habit of using 24 hour time), but I live in the US a…

Don't you mean paper which isn't 215.9 by 279.4 mm?

Go on, switch your thermostat in the US to degrees C. Join us.

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