Hmm. OK, I'll bite. In general, though with many subtle exceptions, all forks of English sound pretty much like English. When it is being spoken it is not always important (or even polite?) to notice the differences - just be aware of them and make whatever allowances for grammar or translations for vocabulary might be necessary for a good understanding. The spoken language is abstract and temporary and disappears on the wind once the words have been uttered and understood.
The written form of the language as used in computer programming languages is almost exclusively American. The user interfaces found in most programs are also in American because they have been written by Americans, or because a decision was taken to use American as the interface language. The language used in the user interface is not often wordy enough for the grammar differences to be obvious and to a large extent they may be ignored in the labelling and pop-ups of the program. More extensive text, such as help files and the like, may well be large enough to stray into areas where grammar differences are more obvious. Vocabulary differences are also likely but the most obvious differences are likely to be those in the spelling of words. English spelling has evolved over many centuries and follows all sorts of rules, often depending on the original donor language. Most of the current differences between American and English spelling were created in the 19th century and have been decided by committee. To the native English speaker, especially those who learned how to spell and use prepositions in school, printed American can be jarring to the eye and the internal ear. Computer programs translated into English are MUCH more pleasant to use than those written by/for Americans. I cannot speak for other English-speaking communities but I would imagine that Australian, New Zealand, South African and, to a certain extent Indian English are all closer to English in terms of grammar and spelling than they are to American. Having said that, the differences are not sufficient to impede mutual understanding, though I suspect the rest of the world is more familiar with American than Americans are familiar with English. Given the choice I would never use a program with an American interface. I just feel more comfortable using my own language, and it makes me feel the programmer, or somebody, cares about making me feel at home. As for the large number of English versions you mentioned, there are other more practical considerations beyond the linguistic details. Because English is used as a native language in many parts of the world there are many detailed differences in the Locale settings. Language is a part of it but en_gb uses miles and metres and sterling pounds, en_ie uses kilometres and euros and en_us uses miles , feet/yards and US dollars, and don't get me started on the unique method used in the US to express dates! >From my experiences I find that when non-English speakers use the term English, they usually mean either American or what is often called "international English" which I think is also American. As the Internet continues to promote ever wider use of American the day will probably come when English is replaced, even for native speakers, but until then, for maximum user satisfaction, we still need en_US for those who don't care and English for the rest of us:-) Richard ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Don't let slow site performance ruin your business. Deploy New Relic APM Deploy New Relic app performance management and know exactly what is happening inside your Ruby, Python, PHP, Java, and .NET app Try New Relic at no cost today and get our sweet Data Nerd shirt too! http://p.sf.net/sfu/newrelic-dev2dev _______________________________________________ Gambas-user mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/gambas-user
