I use en-CA because it makes the most sense for me.
- I want spellcheckers to default to American (analyze vs analyse, etc.) because that's the default in computer science. This, despite en-IN using British conventions.
- Metric units
- A4, etc. paper sizes are the default in India
- Acceptable date format (anything but MM/DD/YY will do)
- I definitely don't want my file explorer showing sizes in lakhs and crores (the commas in Indian numbers) so en-IN is out.
I speak Kannada, but I don't think anyone who can speak English here will confuse Canada for Kannada, whether they are Kannadigas or not.
French here who just defaults to American English on most devices: I never realized that you could have American English with sane unit and date defaults with EN-CA. Will probably use that from now on!
I ended with en-DE that for some reason exists. This way my phone has an English interface rather than poorly translated Polish (or worse, one app had English support but displayed Chinese with Polish as system language).
And sane units/date formatting etc.
I would mildly prefer en-PL, but it does not exist.
That's smart! I use en_IE for the same reason. I for some strange reason assumed that en_CA used non-metric measurements and crazy American dates. Thanks for enlightening me!
If you're old enough, maybe you remember a time when Canada wasn't using the metric system at all. It wasn't that long ago that they were going through metrication: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_Canada
Those reasons don't make sense though. In Canada the official spellings are a weird mixture of British and US English, and mostly British spelling is used. Additionally, the US standard sizes of paper are used in Canada, so that wouldn't be correct either.
What a bizarre comment! Since you already know what spellings work for me, which of the other locale packages, in your esteemed opinion, should I be using to make sense?
Literally in your comment you say you want American English spelling. Which Canadian English is not. Every point I made was directly in response to what you wrote.
Canada doesn't follow the etymological principles behind Oxford spelling, though. For instance, it uses "analyze" rather than "analyse", even though this comes from a Greek sigma (unlike the -ιζω verbs which become -ize in OED). At least in common use, as well, "programme", for instance, is rare, although sometimes found.
Canadians themselves are also pretty inconsistent personally and often use American spellings, especially outside of the -our/-or and -re/-er series, which are the most well-known differences. Part of this is probably attribuable to the fact that Canadian media used American spellings until the 90s.
Canadians also may be found using hyperbritish forms proscribed by the OED, such as "honourary" for "honorary" and so on.
Canadian here, we use the US sizes and describe them in inches (or by name, so we say "letter" or "8.5 by 11"). Microsoft Office uses both inches and millimetres but I always thought they did that for outside of Canada too.
Australian English is excellent too, because they use classy spellings too (I qualify as classy the English I’ve learnt at school in France, please no hard feelings ;) ) and metric system.
Keep in mind that while some spelling in Canadian English matches the US (analyze in Canadian is spelled with the Z), other words match the British English (color is spelled with a U).
I really hope en-IN moves to American spellings and gets rid of the lakh/crore numbers and use million/billion instead (more scientific). Then it basically becomes en-CA with nice things like ₹.
It’s more scientific because science has standardized on SI [1] units with metric prefixes [2]. Above 10^9 and below 10^-9 you can see the exponents change by increments of 3.
> ISO 8601 is the only format that the Government of Canada and Standards Council of Canada officially recommend for all-numeric dates.[28][29][30] But, their usage differs depending of many contexts.[31][32]
> All three formats are used in Canada for long format.
> For English speakers, MDY was preferred form (mmm-dd-yyyy) (Example: April 9, 2019) and used by nearly all English language publications and media companies as well as majority of English language government documents.[citation needed]
> For both French and sometimes English speakers, DMY are used (dd-mmm-yyyy) (Example: 9 April 2019/le 9 avril 2019) and also used in formal letters, academic papers, military, many media companies and even some governmental documents, particularly in French-language ones.
> Federal regulations for shelf life dates on perishable goods mandate a year/month/day format, but allow the month to be written in full, in both official languages, or with a set of standardized two-letter bilingual codes such as 2019 JA 07 or 19 JA 07.
I distinctly remember SQL Server 2000 pulling that one on me. I had switched a DB app over to using ISO dates exclusively in its queries to avoid the month-day-ordering confusion and then the bloody thing earnestly started to parse yyyy-mm-dd dates as yyyy-dd-mm at every chance it got. So much for unambiguous date formats!
Apparently, Kazakhstan uses yyyy-dd-mm, but only in Kazakh (not in Russian.)
I guess if we are only talking about English speakers, that’s not an issue, since if Kazakhs don’t write dates that way in Russian, I presume they wouldn’t do it that way in English either
My (and every other) Swedish social security number uses this format plus 4 more digits. It ends up being the format I usually default to when writing a date. I feel like it is the least likely to be misconstrued, when I start with the full year. Would many people ever mistake it for yyyy-dd-mm?
As an Indian who thinks of date as (in order) day → month → year for me dd-MM-yyyy is the standard.
But given a choice I'd prefer something like dd-MON-yyyy because there is such an incongruous mixture of dd-MM and MM-dd across Indian services that often you are not sure unless one of the numbers crosses 12.
I wish the language settings were more nuanced. I want sites that are primarily in my mother tongue use that, even if they have english version. I want foreign (often corporate) websites that also have a second-class translation to my native language, to stay in English.
HTTP headers already let you assign weights and such to languages you understand, but I doubt many sites implement this properly.
If the site had its own set of weights corresponding to the quality of its translations, it can multiply those out and arrive at a "best" language to show you.
en-CA uses US paper sizes AFAIK. Which is why I use it, as an American, for the same reasons you state — plus $ as the currency — and without changing paper sizes should I ever print something.
I do not know much about Canadian conventions to have made such an informed choice. I use en-US simply because I hate to see the red squiggly lines when I am fighting with someone on reddit
Analyse is the "correct" spelling that we're taught in school, but there has been a gradual shift towards American English due to the dominance that Americans have over the media (e.g. "math" instead of "maths"). Analyse/analyze is one of those words that is in transition, and I suspect we'll be using the American spelling in 50 years' time.
In a professional context I've completely abandoned British English. Anything informal I still use it but for writing code and communications it seems more polite especially for people who speak English as a second language.
As much as would have liked it to be the reverse think it's fair to say that American English is now completely dominant worldwide and that will only continue.
I live in Denmark, but with my browser set to English only. (The OS is set to en-IE.)
It's not unusual for a website to be presented to me in en-DK — probably due to the language setting and geolocation of my IP address — but it's also fairly common for numbers shown in that locale to be a mess.
en-DK specifies a comma decimal separator, which I find confusing when reading English. 1,234.00 being mis-formatted as 1,234,00 isn't ususual. Dates are formatted YYYY-MM-DD, when usage in Denmark is DD-MM-YYYY (as used for da-DK).
Supposedly, en-DK is considered "European English", but it fails at that (decimals, currency), and fails at being Danish too (decimals, dates).
We need an en-EU, which can easily implement the EU's official style for writing English. Meanwhile, I think en-IE is closest.
This is almost certainly wrong but is worth a mention given that the author can't figure it out. In Southern India, there is a language known as Kannada. It has 43 million speakers, which, fun trivia, is more than the population of Canada (38 million). While "Kannada" and "Canada" are pronounced differently, I wonder whether there could be some clicks from Kannada speakers who think they are selecting the local English dialect. The English 'k' and 'c' sounds are so close together that perhaps Kannada speakers with weak English are trying to sound it out? Would be curious to hear someone from India chime in.
Although I haven't come across many Kannadigas who choose en_CA due to KA and CA sounding similar, this is an angle for sure.
But OP's guess (en_CA alphabetically above en_GB / en_US) is a more possible reality.
Another trivia: Kannada-English dialect is called "Kanglish" here. Ex: "ಲಾಕ್-ಡವ್ನ್ ! ಬಸ್ಸು ಕಾರು ಎಲ್ಲಾ ರೋಡಿಂದಾ ಬ್ಯಾನ್!" [phonetic: 'lockdown! baSSu, kaaru ellaa road-indaa byaan!'] Though the sentence is accepted to be Kannada, only true Kannada word there is "ellaa" (=> all)
Kanglish is the norm here, and textbook Kannada isn't getting good love from many. The onslaught of Sankrit on pure classical Kannada is a different topic altogether, for another day!
I assumed you were referring to how people normally conversed in Kannada :)
Personally, I don't consider TV Kannada to be indicative of the language spoken on the streets or in the homes of the city. I would be concerned if this headline had made its appearance in print; I don't think that has happened yet.
Every language tends to evolve and borrow some amount of vocabulary from other languages. I've seen this to be especially true when the spoken and written forms are different, as is the case with quite a few Indian languages. The language spoken on the street is not textbook Kannada - it hasn't been textbook Kannada in forever! None of "Hegidiya Guru" or "Yenu Maga" or "Bro!" is a textbook example of an interpersonal greeting - you'd be hard pressed to find the first one in vogue these days, it is now history. The spoken form continues to evolve on its own. (I can see this being the case with at least three other languages).
This is unlikely IMO. There is no local Kannada-English dialect and even Kannada speakers with weak English would know how to spell it.
My guess is it’s because English (Canada) comes first, before English (United Kingdom) and English (United States), in the list and most people in India are just selecting the first one (en-ca) without preference to any locale.
In India when it comes to technology we(majority) use english almost everywhere, from TV menus to phone apps to the tiny cybercafes in a remote place, everywhere it is in english even with the option of choosing our own language. This is due to a couple of reasons: we have been accustomed to the use of English with any tech product you can think of since it was first launched in India, also no one wants to go through the settings and change the defaults. Also the english dialect here is English-India. Kannada is its own language. I also came to the same conclusion as the author here, EN-CA was the first on the list.
Not just technology either, the two languages for the Indian Parliament are Hindi and English - a relic of colonialism as well (and in a country with 20 odd languages, multiple scripts and hundreds of dialects a lingua franca is required to get anything done without translators on both sides).
The academics are still arguing over whether English is a world language or not but it is the defacto world language and I don't know of another language that can make that claim.
Curiously it's the most widely spoken language while been only the third most spoken native language.
A result of two centuries of the British Empire followed by a century of US dominance in media/business.
The only language that gets close is Mandarin but the split of native to non-native is pretty much inverted between English and Mandarin.
Do you think that users of Firefox in India would like to have “English-India” as one of the language preference choices for the browser? At present, Firefox seems to offer only United States, United Kingdom, and Canada.
In contrast, Mac OS offers eight versions of English for the system language: Australia, Canada, Ireland, India, New Zealand, Singapore, United Kingdom, and United States.
I can't speak for others, but me personally - it doesn't matter when it comes to the interface. I'm cool with En_IN, En_GB and En_US. Whatever the default is, I let that be. I read so much user generated content (like this thread!) where I can't control the locale, so I have to be cool with it.
I'm more particular about the input, especially if it's auto-correcting. I prefer "analyse" to "analyze" and other similar changes so I set the software keyboard accordingly. En_GB and En_IN would both be fine, except for the currency symbols. I prefer En_IN because it gives me access to the Rupee symbol (₹).
Of course English India will be preferred if offered. I checked this on Windows that there is an option within firefox language preferences to set it to system settings. Anyways the En-In will be welcomed but is not a necessary condition though. We do just fine without it for now.
I’m from, and live in, Karnataka and have deliberately set my iPhone locale to Kannada.
That said, I’m almost certain it’s not because of people here mistakenly setting their locale to Canada. Because most of the consumers can understand English to an extent to use it on their phone. Secondly the Kannada translation is horribly bad to an extent of being useless. Most of the day to day phone use in Kannada is impossible because no one has bothered to translate the modern terms and phrases to Kannada.
The P in Pakistan (a majority Muslim country) arguably stands for Punjab,
From wikipedia:
> using it as an acronym .., and referring to the names of the five northern regions of the British Raj: Punjab, Afghania, Kashmir, Sindh, and Baluchistan.
That said, there are a non-trivial number of Sikhs in the area, at least one Sikh holy site is very near the Pakistan-India border in the Punjab region.
Canadian English has a bunch of britishisms and spellings that are artifacts (artefacts?) of its more recent history as a commonwealth dominion and probably French influence. Colour, neighbour, centre, defence, etc. Our ESL teachers are popular internationally because of our relatively "neutral" accent as well, and a reputation for a level of general agreeableness that aligns with some of the traditions of some other cultures. Maybe it's just the first alphabetical one on the list, but these are other factors. This article is about the locale for text, so maybe it's not a spoken English thing.
However, I could see why someone would want to avoid acquiring a southern accent if they weren't from there, or moreso, that rising terminal of the US west coast. (I suspect people in CA tech companies would be a bit less sensitive about others over explaining things to them if they realized that to anyone east of the Sierra Nevada, most of what they they say sounds like a question.)
In the 2006 War in Lebanon, the Canadian Embassy in Riyadh was shocked to find out that there were 10x as many Canadians in Lebanon than expected. Indians leave India, get Canadian residency, (maybe) live as NRI's and then return. That's why there are so many Canadians in India.
Yes, the Canadians of Convenience https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadians_of_convenience was my first thought. That can't be the only reason as the blog post explains—I agree that en-CA coming before en-GB is likely the most important factor—but I'd be surprised if CoCs don't make up a meaningful share of "Canadians" in India. I wonder if there has been a noticeable rush of CoCs out of India during the current COVID19 flareup?
The whole idea of location being tied to the language, date formats and measurement units for software UI will makes less and less sense as time goes on.
It already makes absolutely no sense for many of us.
I think if someone downstairs asked me how far away the airport was and I answered in Kilometers or Vests they would be a bit annoyed.
It would be cool if everyone used SI units but they grow up with local tradition.
Even if you could convince everyone to move there are lots of locale features that don't really have an international standard most people know about. ISO doesn't even have a suggestion for which radix you should use and says both the American and British radix is fine (which is bad since they're mutually incompatible the way they're commonly used.)
When I traveled with a Canadian colleague to Hyderabad, someone described how few catholics there were in India. He was startled, replying that this was the population of Canada.
I was on Lariam as an anti-malarial. He and others could clearly tell which day of the week I took my dose. It was since taken off the market for provoking psychosis. Asked if Lariam made me crazy, he famously replied "Not sure, but it certainly made him more Dave!"
I have a friend who used to travel to a remote region of Ghana pretty regularly. After the first couple of trips she concluded that it was better to just risk/get malaria, and treat it afterwards, than to take the prophylaxis drugs. At least for her, the side effects of the drugs were worse than those of actually getting the disease!
A few years ago, I was in Liberia working on a contract, and was prescribed Lariam as a prophylactic. I'd traveled in West Africa before, but when taking a prophylactic, which wasn't always, I had only had Malarone, which gave me weird dreams and nightmares, but wasn't too bad.
Not so with Lariam. Working in a different culture, and coming to Liberia for the first time, can be stressful in itself, but I honestly don't think I would have made it without ditching Lariam after a few weeks.
I was there for three months initially, extended to six, and was prescribed this crazy drug for the extent of it.
Use another prophylactic. Not everybody are affected like this, but it's not worth it finding out, IME.
Yes. My induced psychosis took the form of hyper-rationality, which I diagnosed as a reaction to the intensity of India rather than to the drug. I didn't sleep, and India never completely quiets down; I listened like a dog to every sound. It would be completely misleading to say I was able to cope with Larium, as the effort I put into "coping" was part of the problem. For example, I arrived with extensive options for hanging my mosquito net under any conceivable conditions, and I turned my room into a spider web.
I did extensive research before I spent 8 months traveling around South America in the midst of the Zika outbreak and of course also concerned with Malaria. My conclusion after all my research was that anti-malarial drugs were less effective per dollar/effort cost than insect bite prevention. I ended up writing an article on the topic on my blog at the time: https://tristor.ro/blog/2016/05/01/trip-preparation-update-i...
I ended up treating most of my clothing and equipment with permethrin, using Picardin spray on my skin, hanging permethrin treated mosquito nets over windows and doorways, and as a final line of defense and for comfort I bought a cheap fan in each country I visited and left it behind in the apartment for the next occupant when I left, having it blowing on me directly at night.
Anti-malarial drugs all seem to have severe neurological or psychological side effects, and some can cause permanent damage, so just on the off-chance that anyone sees this that's considering traveling to a malaria-risk region, be aware there are other options.
I had to cancel a planned trip to the Amazon rain forest in 1998 because of lariam. I was on day 3 of the week long regimen in preparation, but by then the unwanted, horrifying thoughts and images invading my head were terrifying. No experience like that before or since. I learned then that one of the side effects is potential suicide.
I opted to prolong my visits to other destinations with lower malaria risk. Glad to know it has since been banned.
Good guess and you're probably right, but this is as good as any time to bring up Indian 'immigration' to Canada.
___________
A huge number of Indians give up their Indian citizenship to become Canadian citizens while continuing to stay in India (Overseas citizens of India).
It is particularly popular among rich business-people in the country, who want a convenient passport for travel that is easy to obtain and low maintenance. Of English speaking nations, getting citizenship to EU nations was always difficult and the US-IRS chases you down no matter what country you are in. Australia and Canada are wonderful 2nd choices, with Canada making it even easier to live in the US.
I am always surprised at how many of my rich friends whose entire wealth contained within India, are not Indian citizens.
You don't need to be Indian to hate translated software btw.
Esp when you have habits that aren't covered by any "by the book" localization. For example, I'm too used to using a decimal point, but my (RO) locale wants to use a comma.
I explicitly set my locale to EN_US everywhere. EN_IN has this really irritating numbering system (lakh, crores) that is not useful outside of my accounting system.
Despite being a country of European heritage, there is no European country in the top 10 for migration into Canada. Most of the migration source countries are places where labour is cheap and working conditions are poor. If your objective is to increase population, increase 'diversity', and depress labour conditions, then Canada's immigration settings are suitable.
There were plenty other humans in Canada before Europeans arrived...
Western nations have depressed labour conditions around the world for centuries and they are still ensuring that any immigration is going to be to their advantage. (Or at least, the advantage of their corporate and political elites.) The increased precarity and anxiety experienced by working and middle class people in the West is not due to some labour-robbery by people from developing nations. It's a whittling away of social welfare and economic opportunity and a concentration of wealth greater than that of any pre-war time.
The diminishing status of middle class westerners still looks better than the chances you get in India though, so of course foreign workers will probably compete at levels you weren't prepared to, for rewards you deem insufficient. But in both cases, you are fighting for a small piece of the pie, the vast majority of which is taken by the most rich and powerful. So why not point the finger at them? Canada is rich enough for all its citizens and migrants to get N-fold richer at the expense of a very wealthy few. Rather than making some migrants slightly better off at the expense of the working and middle classes. You're falling for the con if you think migration is the problem and not the mass exploitation of all workers.
- I want spellcheckers to default to American (analyze vs analyse, etc.) because that's the default in computer science. This, despite en-IN using British conventions.
- Metric units
- A4, etc. paper sizes are the default in India
- Acceptable date format (anything but MM/DD/YY will do)
- I definitely don't want my file explorer showing sizes in lakhs and crores (the commas in Indian numbers) so en-IN is out.
I speak Kannada, but I don't think anyone who can speak English here will confuse Canada for Kannada, whether they are Kannadigas or not.