> > > > Standard English is indistinguishable from what you might term Standard > > Australian. Even my spoken English is often taken (by the English) as Engli > sh > > with an English accent, and I've never been outside Australia. > > > Right, this is all OT. Hmm. OT is often more fun. > > IMHO bad english is the most common spoken language around the world :) > > I was two years contracted in Riyadh (KSA) to Lucent. Arabic is > spoken there by the arabic region natives, africans, muslims etc. but > english in some form is most common languages westerners use. Just some > figures there are abound 20M Saudi residents, wich of around 5M lives in > Riyadh. (BTW birth rate there is about 1 child per one minute, that's > some crowt of population about 52500 childs per year to start with). Your English is undoubtedly better than my French (I did learn French at school some decades ago, but it's left me). Don't be offended if I remark you're making your point;-) It's a point certain Japanese computer companies were slow to learn - the English0language manuals they created were incomprehensible to us Aussies. > > Most of the ~5M expats in Kingdom are from neibourgh countries and > India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Philippines etc. Many locals > don't speak anything else but arabic but with english you can manage > there most of the situations. Midland is part of the City of Swan. The top five languages after English: Italian Vietnamese Chinese Mandarin Croatian Polish. > And many native english speaker have said to me that it has been very > healty experience for them to have such a diverse community where to > practise your ear to distingquish differencies. The language for anybody > moving to a place like that will cause a cultural shock of some kind. > > > The Language isn't so much a problem, but I do get fed up telling my comput > er we > > use A4 paper. Once I tell it I live in Perth, WA then it should KNOW I use > A4 > > paper, measure lengths in metres, write dates dd/mm/yy and so on. > > > But, aren't you oversimplifying the matter a bit? > > First, many countries there are different languages spoken, they > have different keyboard layouts, the office standards like paper > form size is usually the same, but then again there are people > that with good reason don't like to turn for example the user > interface to their native language even if it was possible. The complications of "getting it right" in KSA don't excuse always getting it wrong in Australia, NZ, Britain, South Africa, Canada. I presume it also makes the wrong paper choice throughout all of Europe, South America, Asia (Turkey to Japan). > > I have C locale, with ISO-8859-1 (or propably should have 8859-15) > character set, english is my preferred user interface as I have used > these darn computers more than 15 years and i don't want to be > forced relearn many things in finnish just because it's now there. > > I shouldn't have any problems, and I don't, having (US or UK english) > environment in finland, having finnish/swedish keyboard (as nothing > else is available here) with european standard office forms etc. > > I agree that you propably should have some kind of simple > setup for those who like to have some standard environment at > that location of the world, but definitely preserving options > to change easily. Or do you think that just that you took a > position from Malaga Spain you either have to use spanish > settings or pretend to be yet at Perth? I have no problem at all with Language being a separate choice (note that I did say that isn't the main issue), and if you want to override paper size etc that's fine too. But let's have proper default values instead of assuming we all use US standards? Heck, korganiser can and does tell me when it's a public holiday in Tasmania. How does it know? Someone associated public holidays to my locale. Why not (probable) language choice, stationary, measurement standards too? > > I don't think it would be very useful, remember that a lot of > people are expats or for other reason don't wan't the local > setup for that region. Top five places of birth of people here who were nt born in Australia: UK 10.49% NZ 2.29% Italy 1.66% India 1.44% Malaysia 1.21 The Italians mostly came here in the 50s - they're older than I am and hardly any will be found using a computer. If they did, like you, they'd use English - they wouldn't know the right bits of Italian;-) But they all use A4 paper (I don't think you can buy Letter paper very easily), use metric measure etc. > > > And that my first choice of dictionary is Australian English and if > > that's not available then UK English is fine. > > > How many of the more than 50 spoken major english dialects you > think would be worth localization? All or just few? > > There is not really one UK English. You should once visit UK I did specify Standard English. The BBC is using more diverse English accents than it used to (indeed I've heard better English from German and Netherlands radio than some recent examples from the BBC). I suspect there's not actually much variation of spelling in Britain; actual choice of words and grammar are altogether different matters, but written English is much more formalised and standardised. > to find this out and be amazed how hard it's first to understand > people from such a small geographical area. Picking up the ozzie > or other dialects from noth america are lot easier than understanding > geordie or jock grunting english. The english language differs a lot > both sides and up and down the west coast too. I can readily understand English as spoken by most of the English, but we have a Scottish reporter on the ABC here that gives me problems. However, I suspect her written English would be indistinguishable from mine so far as spelling and grammar are concerned, and her accent makes it clear she didn't go to any school I attended. > > And once you travel and end up in pub, meet a scotchmen who will > propably tell you that the only good thing that comes out of > England is the road to Scotland :) > > Local people do understand each other dialects there but they dislike > some more than you propaly dislike US English, they would like to > have localization for their living area too. Or don't they? My main concern with Americans is that they assume so readily that what's good for Americans is good for all the rest of us. American English is fine in its place, and its place is America. Australians don't speak it and (mostly) they don't spell it. -- Cheers John Summerfield Microsoft's most solid OS: http://www.geocities.com/rcwoolley/ Note: mail delivered to me is deemed to be intended for me, for my disposition. ============================== If you don't like being told you're wrong, be right! _______________________________________________ Redhat-devel-list mailing list Redhat-devel-list@redhat.com https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/redhat-devel-list
