Re: A language by any other name
As a practical standpoint, the localization choices for English go well beyond spelling... each English variant by definition incorporates local variations in date format, currencies, etc. (Even en_IE and en_GB aren't the same any more, due to the Euro.) Seems to me that American English, Australian English, British English, Singaporese(?) English, Hong Kong English, Canadian English, etc. are most appropriate; there is no reason for one particular variant to be called English. And English of one form or another is used in many other countries as well without historical ties to Britain; en_PH springs to mind. (Indeed, arguably American English is closer to indigenous British usage in the 17th century than current British English, as the francophile spelling fad was very much an 18th century thing. Read Shakespeare, he used all sorts of spellings...) Now as for the behavior of the C locale where it's not defined by the standards... well, leave me out of that flamefest :-) Just my 2/100 Euro. (What are fractional Euros called in English anyway? Cents?) Chris -- Chris Lawrence [EMAIL PROTECTED] - http://www.lordsutch.com/chris/ pgp9mK6toIQFD.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: A language by any other name
Bill Wohler [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Having the English think that British English is the lingua franca of the computing world is the same as the French thinking that French is the lingua franca of the world. It's only wishful thinking. And how is that different to Americans thinking that American English is the only language of the computing world? Pull your head out of your arse (not your ass, that's a donkey) and take a good look around. The world is much more than 50 states. Get an atlas, have a look at how small the US is compared with the rest of the world. Familiarise yourself with some geography if you're one of the 14 percent or so who can't point at the US on a world map.[1] Therefore, without emotion and with a pragmatic hand to guide me, I feel that English should be an alias for en_US. s/without emotion/with typical American patriotism/ s/pragmatic/dogmatic/ So was your message supposed to be serious, or are you just trolling? [1]: http://www.sciencedaily.com/print/1999/03/990301072238.htm -- Sam Couter | Internet Engineer | http://www.topic.com.au/ [EMAIL PROTECTED]| tSA Consulting | OpenPGP key ID: DE89C75C, available on key servers OpenPGP fingerprint: A46B 9BB5 3148 7BEA 1F05 5BD5 8530 03AE DE89 C75C pgpjyKCzUaH3p.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: A language by any other name
On Thu, Sep 27, 2001 at 02:12:46PM +1000, Sam Couter wrote: Therefore, without emotion and with a pragmatic hand to guide me, I feel that English should be an alias for en_US. s/without emotion/with typical American patriotism/ s/pragmatic/dogmatic/ Patriotism != jingoism. -- Nathan Norman - Staff Engineer | A good plan today is better Micromuse Ltd. | than a perfect plan tomorrow. mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] | -- Patton pgpcuOY1qNysE.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: A language by any other name
Just my 2/100 Euro. (What are fractional Euros called in English anyway? Cents?) Euro Cents or just Euro... -Thomas -- Thomas S. Strathmann http://www.tstrathmann.de http://www.pdp7.org pgpFoct9mmF3H.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: A language by any other name
Chris Lawrence [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Seems to me that American English, Australian English, British English, Singaporese(?) English, Hong Kong English, Canadian English, etc. are most appropriate; there is no reason for one particular variant to be called English. As per my original suggestion. We are going to get nowhere trying to force something down people's throats. We should not force anyone to write in American or British or whatever English, or have either one be The English that we use. Otherwise, we will just go on with this stupid debate. Oh, and as someon from the US, the language I speak is English. Got that? All of you(*) making snide remarks that it's not really English can jolly well fuck off, to turn a phrase:-) I don't speak American - I speak English. American English, if you want to qualify it, is fine, but the language is English. It's quite real. If it weren't, you wouldn't be able to read this. (*) Especially those of you who don't even speak English as your native language - where do you get off on telling me what I speak?! Maybe we should just use Debian English or Internet English, wich means: produce something legible by other inhabitants of the Internet and/or Debian, and who cares about the details. -- David N. Welton Consulting: http://www.dedasys.com/ Free Software: http://people.debian.org/~davidw/ Apache Tcl: http://tcl.apache.org/ Personal: http://www.efn.org/~davidw/
Re: A language by any other name
On Thu, Sep 27, 2001 at 07:44:05AM +0200, David N. Welton wrote: Maybe we should just use Debian English or Internet English, wich means: produce something legible by other inhabitants of the Internet and/or Debian, and who cares about the details. Now there's a definition I can live with. English == Debian English == Legible English As long as it's readable, it's fine. Doesn't solve the problem of the default charset though... -- Martijn van Oosterhout kleptog@svana.org http://svana.org/kleptog/ Magnetism, electricity and motion are like a three-for-two special offer: if you have two of them, the third one comes free.
Re: A language by any other name
* Sam Couter [EMAIL PROTECTED] [010926 23:13]: only language of the computing world? Pull your head out of your arse (not your ass, that's a donkey) and take a good look around. The world is much Actually, its a synonym for ass, but whos counting? While were on the track of gross generalization, why does it either take someone from .au or .ca to start turning a thread like this into a real fight? And your asking him if he's the troll? All I require in a locale is that many of our users who don't complain about the current format dont mind that it continues this way. Others: I urge you to rewrite manpages as needed to reword the English you so hate, oh, you dont like writing documentation? Oh well. What the hell is the point of this thread? It's obviously not to do anything but bash heads, and doesn't help the users. -- Scott Dier [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.ringworld.org/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] History teaches that grave threats to liberty often come in times of urgency, when constitutional rights seem too extravagant to endure. - Justice Thurgood Marshall (1989)
Re: A language by any other name
Martijn van Oosterhout kleptog@svana.org writes: On Thu, Sep 27, 2001 at 07:44:05AM +0200, David N. Welton wrote: Maybe we should just use Debian English or Internet English, wich means: produce something legible by other inhabitants of the Internet and/or Debian, and who cares about the details. Now there's a definition I can live with. English == Debian English == Legible English As long as it's readable, it's fine. Doesn't solve the problem of the default charset though... iso8859-1 covers most people, doesn't it? I mean, as a default. I admit I don't know a lot about charsets - iso8859-1 is enough for me to comunicate in Italian and English. Or the default programming language: I would recommend elastiC. ;-) -- David N. Welton Consulting: http://www.dedasys.com/ Free Software: http://people.debian.org/~davidw/ Apache Tcl: http://tcl.apache.org/ Personal: http://www.efn.org/~davidw/
Re: A language by any other name
On Thu, Sep 27, 2001 at 08:04:50AM +0200, David N. Welton wrote: Doesn't solve the problem of the default charset though... iso8859-1 covers most people, doesn't it? I mean, as a default. I admit I don't know a lot about charsets - iso8859-1 is enough for me to comunicate in Italian and English. ISO 8859-1 has been the traditional charset of English under Unix. (The alternatives have usually been rough permutations of iso8859-1.) UTF-8 is nice, but too much stuff still spits up over it to make the default. -- David Starner - [EMAIL PROTECTED] Pointless website: http://dvdeug.dhis.org When the aliens come, when the deathrays hum, when the bombers bomb, we'll still be freakin' friends. - Freakin' Friends
Re: A language by any other name
On Thu, Sep 27, 2001 at 08:04:50AM +0200, David N. Welton wrote: Doesn't solve the problem of the default charset though... iso8859-1 covers most people, doesn't it? I mean, as a default. I admit I don't know a lot about charsets - iso8859-1 is enough for me to comunicate in Italian and English. Well, IIRC it doesn't have the pound sign or the euro symbol. I think that's what iso8859-15 is for... -- Martijn van Oosterhout kleptog@svana.org http://svana.org/kleptog/ Magnetism, electricity and motion are like a three-for-two special offer: if you have two of them, the third one comes free.
Re: A language by any other name
Chris Lawrence [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Seems to me that American English, Australian English, British English, Singaporese(?) English, Hong Kong English, Canadian English, etc. are most appropriate; there is no reason for one particular variant to be called English. May I remind you gentlemen that I started this thread because gdm sets an environment variable to English, a token that doesn't exist and is not aliased to any valid locale[0], whilst Spanish, French and others are? I don't care what Spanish is aliased to, I don't use the alias. IFF I set any locale variable to something related to Spanish, I'll probably set them to es_ES because that's what's got the most translations. Where it important for me, I'd set LC_MONETARY to es_CR (after defining it). Why the aliases exist in the first place is beyond me, perhaps xx_XX is too cryptic and there's people out there who need to see a Xenopholand alias. The reason why I submitted the original bug was because I saw something what missing. After thinking about it, I think there's also lack of consistency (Spanish - Spain, English - England, it can't get easier than that). Ben said he wouldn't make the change if there's isn't a concensus regarding what this should be aliased to. I'm sure I could collect enough proof for lack of concensus regarding some of the other aliases, but that'd be childish, and we have plenty of that already and better things to do. [0] I haven't installed a current version of gdm to see of the bug is still there or not (I used the testing version at the time), and that's why I haven't submitted a bug against it. -- Marcelo | Rincewind could scream for mercy in nineteen languages, [EMAIL PROTECTED] | and just scream in another forty-four. | -- (Terry Pratchett, Interesting Times)
Re: A language by any other name
Previously Duncan Findlay wrote: I also think it's ridiculous that everybody be forced to write Debian documentation in American English. Nobody is forced to, and everything I write is in real (British) English. Wichert. -- _ / Nothing is fool-proof to a sufficiently talented fool \ | [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.liacs.nl/~wichert/ | | 1024D/2FA3BC2D 576E 100B 518D 2F16 36B0 2805 3CB8 9250 2FA3 BC2D |
Re: A language by any other name
On Thu, 27 Sep 2001, Martijn van Oosterhout wrote: On Thu, Sep 27, 2001 at 07:44:05AM +0200, David N. Welton wrote: Maybe we should just use Debian English or Internet English, wich means: produce something legible by other inhabitants of the Internet and/or Debian, and who cares about the details. Now there's a definition I can live with. English == Debian English == Legible English As long as it's readable, it's fine. Ah, that's a good one. Let's just say Legible English == C locale. So English could be linked to Default locale set. Pretty much fits, IMHO. -- wouter dot verhelst at advalvas in Belgium This is Linux world. On a quiet day, you can hear Windows reboot.
Re: A language by any other name
On Thu, Sep 27, 2001 at 12:58:31AM -0500, Scott Dier wrote: * Sam Couter [EMAIL PROTECTED] [010926 23:13]: only language of the computing world? Pull your head out of your arse (not your ass, that's a donkey) and take a good look around. The world is much Actually, its a synonym for ass, but whos counting? No, in Australian (and most likely British) English they are quite different. An ass is only a donkey. An arse is something quite different. Hamish -- Hamish Moffatt VK3SB [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: A language by any other name
At 2001-09-27T00:32:08Z, Bill Wohler [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: ...the French thinking that French is the lingua franca of the world. It's only wishful thinking. From Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary: Lingua Franca \Lingua Franca\ (l[i^][ng]gw[.a] fr[a^][ng]k[.a]). [It., prop., language of the Franks.] In a literal sense, French *is* the lingua franca of the world. -- Kirk Strauser
Re: A language by any other name
On 27 Sep 2001, Kirk Strauser wrote: At 2001-09-27T00:32:08Z, Bill Wohler [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: ...the French thinking that French is the lingua franca of the world. It's only wishful thinking. From Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary: Lingua Franca \Lingua Franca\ (l[i^][ng]gw[.a] fr[a^][ng]k[.a]). [It., prop., language of the Franks.] In a literal sense, French *is* the lingua franca of the world. Except that the Franks were a Germanic people who spoke a language that had more in common with Old High German than French... :) Steve Langasek postmodern programmer
Re: A language by any other name
Sean Middleditch [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Why such emphasis? The idea is to spell words like colour instead of color, not to write the ls man page in iambic pentameter. No, the idea is to spell it color, not colour. The mass of writing in the computer world is American English, for better or for worse, and having different spellings in a single system is as distracting and unprofessional as misspelling the word entirely. Now some don't think that misspelled words are a big deal, but these are not enlightened people. Just so there is no confusion, I am not suggesting that everyone in the world use American English for everything. American English should be used for the documentation in a Debian system and therefore the alias for English should be en_US. If Romeo and Juliet were turned a package, the text would of course be in en_GB, but /usr/share/doc/rj/README.Debian and the man page ;-) would be in en_US. If a multi-billion dollar company whose employees have all learned British English decide that their documentation should be in American English, that's saying something. -- Bill Wohler [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.newt.com/wohler/ GnuPG ID:610BD9AD Maintainer of comp.mail.mh FAQ and mh-e. Vote Libertarian! If you're passed on the right, you're in the wrong lane.
Re: A language by any other name
On Thu, 2001-09-27 at 17:28, Bill Wohler wrote: Sean Middleditch [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Why such emphasis? The idea is to spell words like colour instead of color, not to write the ls man page in iambic pentameter. No, the idea is to spell it color, not colour. The mass of writing in the computer world is American English, for better or for worse, and having different spellings in a single system is as distracting and unprofessional as misspelling the word entirely. Now some don't think that misspelled words are a big deal, but these are not enlightened people. If the professionality of an OS depends on how the manpages spell colour, why don't we just throw debian in the trashcan (that's american or english? dunno...) and switch to windows? i am sure _that_ kind of bugs are not present on M$ platform, surely they are tagged high priority, much higher than, say, IE security bugs. please, don't strech this argument (colour or color) to its crazy limit. bye|hello, federico -- Federico Di Gregorio MIXAD LIVE Chief of Research Technology [EMAIL PROTECTED] Debian GNU/Linux Developer Italian Press Contact[EMAIL PROTECTED] The number of the beast: vi vi vi. -- Delexa Jones
Re: A language by any other name
On Thu, Sep 27, 2001 at 08:28:57AM -0700, Bill Wohler wrote: Sean Middleditch [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Why such emphasis? The idea is to spell words like colour instead of color, not to write the ls man page in iambic pentameter. No, the idea is to spell it color, not colour. The mass of writing in the computer world is American English, for better or for worse, and having different spellings in a single system is as distracting and unprofessional as misspelling the word entirely. Now some don't think that misspelled words are a big deal, but these are not enlightened people. Just so there is no confusion, I am not suggesting that everyone in the world use American English for everything. American English should be used for the documentation in a Debian system and therefore the alias for English should be en_US. If Romeo and Juliet were turned a package, the text would of course be in en_GB, but /usr/share/doc/rj/README.Debian and the man page ;-) would be in en_US. If a multi-billion dollar company whose employees have all learned British English decide that their documentation should be in American English, that's saying something. H, you _didn't_ get it, did you ? -- Eric VAN BUGGENHAUT Oh My God! They killed init! You Bastards! --from a /. post \_|_/ Andago \/ \/ Av. Santa Engracia, 54 a n d a g o |--E-28010 Madrid - tfno:+34(91)2041100 /\___/\ http://www.andago.com / | \ Innovando en Internet [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: A language by any other name
27.09.2001 pisze Bill Wohler ([EMAIL PROTECTED]): If a multi-billion dollar company whose employees have all learned British English decide that their documentation should be in American English, that's saying something. That's saying nothing. Debian IS NOT multi-billion dollar company. It has no employees and has no possibility to enforce anything. Many Debian developers (especially non-native English speakers) use another common English dialect, i.e. Bad English (this is e.c. my case). Is it saying anything? best regards, Jubal -- [ Miros/law L Baran, baran-at-knm-org-pl, neg IQ, cert AI ] [ 0101010 is ] [ BOF2510053411, makabra.knm.org.pl/~baran/, alchemy pany ] [ The Answer ] LIBRA (Sep. 23 to Oct. 22) Your desire for justice and truth will be overshadowed by your desire for filthy lucre and a decent meal. Be gracious and polite. Someone is watching you, so stop staring like that.
Re: A language by any other name
On Thu, Sep 27, 2001 at 08:28:57AM -0700, Bill Wohler wrote: If a multi-billion dollar company whose employees have all learned British English decide that their documentation should be in American English, that's saying something. It says that they feel Americans are too provincial. I think otherwise. The rest of us have learned to deal with Americanisms in our daily life. I'm sure the USAians can do the same. -S -- by Rocket to the Moon, by Airplane to the Rocket, by Taxi to the Airport, by Frontdoor to the Taxi, by throwing back the blanket and laying down the legs ... - They Might Be Giants
Re: A language by any other name
On Wed, Sep 26, 2001 at 05:32:08PM -0700, Bill Wohler wrote: I think English should be an alias for en_US. Having the English think that British English is the lingua franca of the computing world is the same as the French thinking that French is the lingua franca of the world. It's only wishful thinking. British English is beautiful where it appears in poems, plays, and novels by Shakespeare and Wilde and other brilliant English authors. It certainly does NOT belong in the ls man page. Note that SAP is one of many computing companies who have standardized on American English. They have folks from *Great Britain* translating the German into American English. Similarly, I wish that Debian required that documentation and output appear in American English as well. Inconsistent styles reduces the professional feel of the product. Therefore, without emotion and with a pragmatic hand to guide me, I feel that English should be an alias for en_US. As a Canadian, I find it quite frustrating how Americans find that all English on the internet should be American. Further, I don't understand why Americans insist on removing the u in words like colours. But, putting my own radical beliefs aside, I think that English should definitely be an alias for en_GB, seeing how American really isn't English per se. I also think it's ridiculous that everybody be forced to write Debian documentation in American English. Debian is an international project, and only in the US is American English the standard. There are dozens of countries that use a dialect closer to British than American. BTW, you might think that Canadians use American English, after all, we are neighbours, but that's totally incorrect. I apologise, I have not been following this thread until now, so if I just said exactly what someone else said, that please feel free to ignore me. Duncan Findlay
Re: A language by any other name
British English is beautiful where it appears in poems, plays, and novels by Shakespeare and Wilde and other brilliant English authors. It certainly does NOT belong in the ls man page. Why such emphasis? The idea is to spell words like colour instead of color, not to write the ls man page in iambic pentameter. I am reminded of an email I saw some years ago with error messages in Haiku. Ben. :)
Re: A language by any other name
On Wed, 2001-09-26 at 20:50, Ben Burton wrote: British English is beautiful where it appears in poems, plays, and novels by Shakespeare and Wilde and other brilliant English authors. It certainly does NOT belong in the ls man page. Why such emphasis? The idea is to spell words like colour instead of color, not to write the ls man page in iambic pentameter. I am reminded of an email I saw some years ago with error messages in Haiku. I think I'd RTFM a lot more if the man pages *were* in Iambic Pentameter... ~,^ Ben. :) Sean Etc.
Re: A language by any other name
also sprach Duncan Findlay (on Wed, 26 Sep 2001 08:54:40PM -0400): But, putting my own radical beliefs aside, I think that English should definitely be an alias for en_GB, seeing how American really isn't English per se. agreed! martin; (greetings from the heart of the sun.) \ echo mailto: !#^.*|tr * mailto:; [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- riesco a leggerti i pensieri. dovresti vergognarti. pgpeGH7GU2vSY.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: A language by any other name
On Wed, 26 Sep 2001, Bill Wohler wrote: I think English should be an alias for en_US. Of course you do; you're /from/ the US. Having the English think that British English is the lingua franca of the computing world is the same as the French thinking that French is the lingua franca of the world. It's only wishful thinking. And believing that not just English, but /American/ English is somehow universal is the sort of arrogance typical of the provincial mindset for which Americans are notorious. Note that SAP is one of many computing companies who have standardized on American English. They have folks from *Great Britain* translating the German into American English. And as a corporation, they're free to slight as many people as they want if it leads to higher profits.[1] But Debian is built on consensus, not on profit margins. We already have a consensus that there can never be a consensus on pointing 'English' to any particular regional variant of the language, because there is no single right answer to the question of which one is English. Similarly, I wish that Debian required that documentation and output appear in American English as well. Inconsistent styles reduces the professional feel of the product. I observe here, wryly, that a larger percentage of work done on Debian, including documentation work, is done by non-native speakers of English than is done by native speakers of British English. Steve Langasek postmodern programmer [1] And British translators translating German text to American English is a testament only to the intellectual prowess of the British translators, not to the natural superiority of the American tongue.
Re: A language by any other name
On Wed, Sep 26, 2001 at 09:07:27PM -0400, Sean Middleditch wrote: On Wed, 2001-09-26 at 20:50, Ben Burton wrote: British English is beautiful where it appears in poems, plays, and novels by Shakespeare and Wilde and other brilliant English authors. It certainly does NOT belong in the ls man page. Why such emphasis? The idea is to spell words like colour instead of color, not to write the ls man page in iambic pentameter. I am reminded of an email I saw some years ago with error messages in Haiku. I think I'd RTFM a lot more if the man pages *were* in Iambic Pentameter... ~,^ I wouldn't -- I'd get kinda confused :-) Duncan
Re: A language by any other name
I wrote: Surely there are locales for welsh and Scottish gaelic? Keith G. Murphy writes: I should think not. Those are two *very* different Celtic languages. Nor did I say otherwise. Read my sentence as Surely there is a locale for welsh and also a locale for Scottish gaelic. -- John Hasler [EMAIL PROTECTED] Dancing Horse Hill Elmwood, Wisconsin
Re: A language by any other name
John Hasler wrote: I wrote: Surely there are locales for welsh and Scottish gaelic? Keith G. Murphy writes: I should think not. Those are two *very* different Celtic languages. Nor did I say otherwise. Read my sentence as Surely there is a locale for welsh and also a locale for Scottish gaelic. -- OK. I read it as: same language, different locales. I.e., Welsh gaelic and Scottish gaelic. *English* language ambiguity. :-)
Re: A language by any other name
Yow! Things are getting confusing. Great Britain used to be called Britain by the Romans (so if someone still does on this list, he must be very old.) Great was not just added to include other places. Great Britain is just the modern and correct way to call it. This or you can use UK, a synonym with Great Britain which includes England, Scotland and Wales as well as other smaller islands acquired by the Brits through historical battles and trades with the French and Europe. One I know about personally is the isle of Wight: great place for relaxing BTW. Some definitions courtesy of dictionary.com: Brit·ta·ny (brtn-) also Bre·tagne (br-täny) A historical region and former province of northwest France on a peninsula between the English Channel and the Bay of Biscay. It was settled c. 500 by Britons driven out of their homeland by the Anglo-Saxons. The region was formally incorporated into France in 1532. Brit·ain1 (brtn) The island of Great Britain during pre-Roman, Roman, and early Anglo-Saxon times before the reign of Alfred the Great (871-899). The name is derived from Brittania, which the Romans used for the portion of the island that they occupied. United Kingdom or United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland Commonly called Great Britain or Britain.. Abbr. UK A country of western Europe comprising England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. Beginning with the kingdom of England, it was created by three acts of union: with Wales (1536), Scotland (1707), and Ireland (1800)
Re: A language by any other name
On Wed, 19 Sep 2001, Laurent de Segur wrote: Things are getting confusing. Great Britain used to be called Britain by the Romans (so if someone still does on this list, he must be very old.) Great was not just added to include other places. Great Britain is just the modern and correct way to call it. This or you can use UK, a synonym with Great Britain which includes England, Scotland and Wales as well as other smaller islands acquired by the Brits through historical battles and trades with the French and Europe. One I know about personally is the isle of Wight: great place for relaxing BTW. Essentially, 'United Kingdom' is a political designation, 'Great Britain' is a geographical one. Other than that, the distinctions between the two are fairly minor... :) For my part, I don't consider Northern Ireland part of Great Britain, but I do consider it part of the United Kingdom. shrug Steve Langasek postmodern programmer
Re: A language by any other name
Wouter Verhelst [EMAIL PROTECTED] immo vero scripsit IIRC, the UK is England, Wales and Scotland, while Great Britain includes Northern Ireland, and a few other colonies. The other way around. UK is the country, GB is the island. regards, junichi -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.netfort.gr.jp/~dancer
Re: A language by any other name
On Wed, Sep 19, 2001 at 02:37:15PM -0500, John Hasler wrote: While en_GB is english as spoken in Great Britain. Perhpas one of the residents thereof can explain the difference. Great Britain == England, Wales, Scotland United Kingdom == England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland British Isles == England, Wales, Scotland, All of Ireland, and probably a few other bits and bobs into the bargain. Full name of the UK is The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. So using GB as a country code is incorrect, as Great Britain is *NOT* a country, really. Cheers, Nick not a pedant Phillips -- Nick Phillips -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] It's lucky you're going so slowly, because you're going in the wrong direction.
Re: A language by any other name
Nick writes: So using GB as a country code is incorrect, as Great Britain is *NOT* a country, really. You better have a talk with the ISO about that. -- John Hasler [EMAIL PROTECTED] (John Hasler) Dancing Horse Hill Elmwood, WI
Re: A language by any other name
On Thu, Sep 20, 2001 at 07:42:53AM -0500, John Hasler wrote: Nick writes: So using GB as a country code is incorrect, as Great Britain is *NOT* a country, really. You better have a talk with the ISO about that. [grin] There are enough fucked-up standards out there that one more won't hurt... ...much. Besides, it was probably the ignorant Brits on the committee that decided on the codes that insisted that they didn't like UK :( And in oh-so-many other areas we also have to live with such things. We're known as Great Britain in various sports, but when England play football/ rugby/whatever, they usually misappropriate the UK national anthem (while the Scots, Welsh, and Northern Irish do their own thing)... we do end up using Land of Hope and Glory occasionally. Maybe there's a difference between a nation and a country, too. Point being, if most of us don't have a clue where we belong to, how should the ISO or anyone else be expected to get it right? Cheers, Nick (mix up a chunk of English with a bit of Welsh, lay a veneer of British over the result, and throw in a dash of UK...) -- Nick Phillips -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] Everything that you know is wrong, but you can be straightened out.
Re: A language by any other name
Nick Phillips writes: Besides, it was probably the ignorant Brits on the committee that decided on the codes that insisted that they didn't like UK :( But GB is listed opposite United Kingdom, not Great Britain. A political compromise, I guess. I assume residents of Northern Ireland supposed to use GB? BTW, there appears to be no Welsh locale. -- John Hasler [EMAIL PROTECTED] (John Hasler) Dancing Horse Hill Elmwood, WI
Re: A language by any other name
On Thu, Sep 20, 2001 at 04:37:45PM +0100, Nick Phillips wrote: Besides, it was probably the ignorant Brits on the committee that decided on the codes that insisted that they didn't like UK :( Well, UK is rather improper for a country code, because that is an acronym for a generic term. Same with US. Yeah, I know that everybody knows which kingdom or states they refer to, but it still feels wrong... http://www.everything2.com/?node=Avoid%20Ethnocentrism (How off-topic can I get? :) -- 2. That which causes joy or happiness.
Re: A language by any other name
John Hasler wrote: that. Surely there are locales for welsh and Scottish gaelic? -- I should think not. Those are two *very* different Celtic languages.
Re: A language by any other name
Gustavo Noronha Silva [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Em Fri, 14 Sep 2001 00:11:06 +1000 Drew Parsons [EMAIL PROTECTED] escreveu: I agree. This argument sounds reasonable. If spanish maps to Spain, then english should map to England. nah that's not it... if I understand it correctly, united states would map to es_US and england would map to en_EN(UK?)... It is en_GB. I believe that en_UK would be for Ukrainian english. The mind boggles. -- Gilbert Laycock email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Maths and Computer Science, http://www.mcs.le.ac.uk/~glaycock University of Leicester phone: (+44) 116 252 3902
Re: A language by any other name
On 19 Sep 2001, Gilbert Laycock wrote: Em Fri, 14 Sep 2001 00:11:06 +1000 Drew Parsons [EMAIL PROTECTED] escreveu: I agree. This argument sounds reasonable. If spanish maps to Spain, then english should map to England. nah that's not it... if I understand it correctly, united states would map to es_US and england would map to en_EN(UK?)... It is en_GB. I believe that en_UK would be for Ukrainian english. The mind boggles. en_UK is English as spoken in the United Kingdom. The ISO country code for the Ukraine is UA. Steve Langasek postmodern programmer
Re: A language by any other name
Gustavo Noronha Silva writes: nah that's not it... if I understand it correctly, united states would map to es_US and england would map to en_EN(UK?)... es_US would be spanish as used in the US, wouldn't it? How about this: United States maps to: Please choose a language a) english b) spanish and a) would map to en_US and b) to es_US. I believe that en_UK would be for Ukrainian english. The mind boggles. Well, kdelibs2g installed /usr/share/locale/en_UK/LC_MESSAGES/kde.mo here. -- John Hasler [EMAIL PROTECTED] Dancing Horse Hill Elmwood, Wisconsin
Re: A language by any other name
On Wed, Sep 19, 2001 at 11:57:06AM -0500, Steve Langasek wrote: On 19 Sep 2001, Gilbert Laycock wrote: I believe that en_UK would be for Ukrainian english. The mind boggles. There's an en_DA, and someone was arguing for basically a en_SK recently. It wouldn't be unprecedented. en_UK is English as spoken in the United Kingdom. The ISO country code for the Ukraine is UA. en_UK is not English as spoken in the United Kingdom. The ISO country code for the United Kingdom is GB. UK is not yet assigned, according to /usr/share/misc/countries.gz. -- David Starner - [EMAIL PROTECTED] Pointless website: http://dvdeug.dhis.org I don't care if Bill personally has my name and reads my email and laughs at me. In fact, I'd be rather honored. - Joseph_Greg
Re: A language by any other name
Steve Langasek writes: en_UK is English as spoken in the United Kingdom. While en_GB is english as spoken in Great Britain. Perhpas one of the residents thereof can explain the difference. -- John Hasler [EMAIL PROTECTED] (John Hasler) Dancing Horse Hill Elmwood, WI
Re: A language by any other name
On 19 Sep 2001, John Hasler wrote: Steve Langasek writes: en_UK is English as spoken in the United Kingdom. While en_GB is english as spoken in Great Britain. Perhpas one of the residents thereof can explain the difference. IIRC, the UK is England, Wales and Scotland, while Great Britain includes Northern Ireland, and a few other colonies. But I might be wrong... -- wouter dot verhelst at advalvas dot be Human knowledge belongs to the world -- From the movie Antitrust rm -rf /bin/laden
Re: A language by any other name
en_UK is English as spoken in the United Kingdom. While en_GB is english as spoken in Great Britain. Perhpas one of the residents thereof can explain the difference. Well, no. `GB' seems to be the ISO country code for the United Kingdom, perverse as that might appear. p. pgptzf0wFL9Tc.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: A language by any other name
On Wed, 19 Sep 2001, David Starner wrote: On Wed, Sep 19, 2001 at 11:57:06AM -0500, Steve Langasek wrote: On 19 Sep 2001, Gilbert Laycock wrote: I believe that en_UK would be for Ukrainian english. The mind boggles. There's an en_DA, and someone was arguing for basically a en_SK recently. It wouldn't be unprecedented. en_UK is English as spoken in the United Kingdom. The ISO country code for the Ukraine is UA. en_UK is not English as spoken in the United Kingdom. The ISO country code for the United Kingdom is GB. UK is not yet assigned, according to /usr/share/misc/countries.gz. Err... the country code for United Kingdom may be GB per ISO 3166, but UK as a country code still references United Kingdom, not the Ukraine -- note the TLD (which ought to match the ISO code, but oh well). I hardly think 'UA' makes a sensible abbreviation for 'Ukraine' unless 'UK' is already taken -- so whether or not it appears in the official list, actual usage shows that UK is understood to mean United Kingdom. Steve Langasek postmodern programmer
Re: A language by any other name
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1
On Wednesday 19 Sep 2001 8:37 pm, John Hasler wrote:
Steve Langasek writes:
en_UK is English as spoken in the United Kingdom.
While en_GB is english as spoken in Great Britain. Perhpas one of
the residents thereof can explain the difference.
en_UK doesn't exist as a locale AFAIK, it is en_GB I believe.
The difference between United KIngdom and Great Britain is rather
blurred. However, it appears to be that Great Britain comprises
England, Scotland and Wales, whereas United Kindom adds Northern
Ireland to that.
stephen:~$ dict -d wn united kingdom
1 definition found
- From WordNet (r) 1.7 [wn]:
United Kingdom
n : a monarchy in northwestern Europe occupying most of the
British Isles; divided into England and Scotland and
Wales and Northern Ireland [syn: {United Kingdom}, {UK},
{Great Britain}, {Britain}, {United Kingdom of Great
Britain and Northern Ireland}]
stephen:~$ dict -d wn great britain
1 definition found
- From WordNet (r) 1.7 [wn]:
Great Britain
n 1: a monarchy in northwestern Europe occupying most of the
British Isles; divided into England and Scotland and
Wales and Northern Ireland [syn: {United Kingdom}, {UK},
{Great Britain}, {Britain}, {United Kingdom of Great
Britain and Northern Ireland}]
2: an island comprising England and Scotland and Wales [syn:
{Great Britain}]
The line *does* seem rather blurry. Personally I use the two terms
interchangeably. Others like to be more exact about it.
- --
Stephen Stafford
finger [EMAIL PROTECTED] to get gpg public key
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Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org
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tffIWgfx+sAZmMroxOuIDHU=
=guL+
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Re: A language by any other name
On Wed, Sep 19, 2001 at 02:37:15PM -0500, John Hasler wrote: Steve Langasek writes: en_UK is English as spoken in the United Kingdom. While en_GB is english as spoken in Great Britain. Perhpas one of the residents thereof can explain the difference. Well, I'm not a resident thereof, but at least at some point, the official name of the country is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. AIUI, the island on which you find England, Scotland, and Wales is called Britain. I'm not sure how Great modifies that unless it's to include some of the smaller outlying islands, like the Shetlands and the Isle of Man. Now, I'll let some Brit come along and tell us all how I've got all that 100% wrong. :) -- G. Branden Robinson|You can have my PGP passphrase when Debian GNU/Linux |you pry it from my cold, dead [EMAIL PROTECTED] |brain. http://people.debian.org/~branden/ |-- Adam Thornton pgp1ZnAfnj7Zs.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: A language by any other name
On Wed, Sep 19, 2001 at 05:07:07PM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote: On Wed, Sep 19, 2001 at 02:37:15PM -0500, John Hasler wrote: Steve Langasek writes: en_UK is English as spoken in the United Kingdom. While en_GB is english as spoken in Great Britain. Perhpas one of the residents thereof can explain the difference. Well, I'm not a resident thereof, but at least at some point, the official name of the country is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. AIUI, the island on which you find England, Scotland, and Wales is called Britain. I'm not sure how Great modifies that unless it's to include some of the smaller outlying islands, like the Shetlands and the Isle of Man. Now, I'll let some Brit come along and tell us all how I've got all that 100% wrong. :) Close enough. (Great) Britain is the island. The UK is the country. 'Great' is shameless pimping of the name, with no particular meaning to anybody but a historian. I think it got added when some land got annexed or similar, not sure which. (If Irish people can ever stop killing each other long enough, N. Ireland might drop out of the country. At this point the whole thing will become absurd.) -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : | Dept. of Computing, `. `' | Imperial College, `-http://www.debian.org/ | London, UK pgpBSzOTVhtm1.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: A language by any other name
Stephen Stafford writes: en_UK doesn't exist as a locale AFAIK, it is en_GB I believe. http://www.bcpl.net/~jspath/isocodes.html lists UK as United Kingdom and GB as Great Britain but digitalid.verisign.com/ccodes.html lists only GB and as United Kingdom. It lists nothing for UK. I guess UK is one of those historical leftovers that http://www.bcpl.net/~jspath/isocodes.html admits to including. I guess somebody needs to tell the KDE folks that they are living in the 1960's. The difference between United KIngdom and Great Britain is rather blurred. Yes. I was interested in the difference between the two dialects of english :) However, it appears to be that Great Britain comprises England, Scotland and Wales, whereas United Kindom adds Northern Ireland to that. Surely there are locales for welsh and Scottish gaelic? -- John Hasler [EMAIL PROTECTED] (John Hasler) Dancing Horse Hill Elmwood, WI
Re: A language by any other name
On Wed, 19 Sep 2001, Branden Robinson wrote: AIUI, the island on which you find England, Scotland, and Wales is called Britain. I'm not sure how Great modifies that unless it's to include some of the smaller outlying islands, like the Shetlands and the Isle of Man. The island where England etc. is found is Great Britain as opposed to Bretagne or Britanny, a province of France which was settled by Celts who fled after the Saxon invasions. -- Jaldhar H. Vyas [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: franc,ais locale (was Re: A language by any other name)
On Fri, Sep 14, 2001 at 11:21:02AM -0400, Colin Walters wrote: Oliver Elphick olly@lfix.co.uk writes: Cyrille Chepelov wrote: Le ven, sep 14, 2001, 04:13:31 +0900, Junichi Uekawa a crit: ... (by the way, does the line mutt added at the very beginning of this post display completely on your screen ?) Your message didn't specify any character set, so the non-ASCII characters seem to have been dropped. ? It displayed for me, and I do see: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Uh ? I do see : Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-15 ?? -- Eric VAN BUGGENHAUT Oh My God! They killed init! You Bastards! --from a /. post \_|_/ Andago \/ \/ Av. Santa Engracia, 54 a n d a g o |--E-28010 Madrid - tfno:+34(91)2041100 /\___/\ http://www.andago.com / | \ Innovando en Internet [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: franc,ais locale (was Re: A language by any other name)
Colin Walters [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit in Cyrille's headers, which look fine. ...same here... I wonder if Gnus is doing some auto-detect action? I wouldn't think it would add a Content-Type header though :P -- Josh Huber | [EMAIL PROTECTED] |
Re: A language by any other name
Wouter Verhelst [EMAIL PROTECTED] immo vero scripsit On Thu, 13 Sep 2001, Nick Phillips wrote: [*] By definition, the English speak English. What the Americans speak is different to what the English speak. Therefore the Americans don't speak English. That would mean the Belgian would speak Belgian, right? I doubt it... No, Belgian would not speak Belgian, but they are Belgian and thus it can be belgian, as it were. regards, junichi -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.netfort.gr.jp/~dancer
franc,ais locale (was Re: A language by any other name)
Marcelo E. Magallon [EMAIL PROTECTED] immo vero scripsit On a very different topic, I cannot even type in franc,ais in my system, and it seems to be a character not available in the default locale which is C. How are people meant to handle this? regards, junichi -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.netfort.gr.jp/~dancer
Re: franc,ais locale (was Re: A language by any other name)
Le ven, sep 14, 2001, à 04:13:31 +0900, Junichi Uekawa a écrit: On a very different topic, I cannot even type in franc,ais in my system, and it seems to be a character not available in the default locale which is C. C does not specify a charset outside ASCII, does it ? On my system, with LC_ALL=C, I surely can type and display whatever glyph is in 8859-1. What does your system, with LC_ALL=C, do with characters above 127 ? (and how does it display characters under 128 ? sighRomaji/sigh ?) How are people meant to handle this? Drop outdated, region-specific encodings and switch all to a united one. In gdm's case, the specific problem of displaying français on an Asian box (or, for what it's worth, displaying the word Nihongo in one of its original scripts on an European box) has a solution not very far ahead. (by the way, does the line mutt added at the very beginning of this post display completely on your screen ?) -- Cyrille -- Grumpf.
Re: franc,ais locale (was Re: A language by any other name)
Cyrille Chepelov wrote: Le ven, sep 14, 2001, 04:13:31 +0900, Junichi Uekawa a crit: ... (by the way, does the line mutt added at the very beginning of this post display completely on your screen ?) Your message didn't specify any character set, so the non-ASCII characters seem to have been dropped. -- Oliver Elphick[EMAIL PROTECTED] Isle of Wight http://www.lfix.co.uk/oliver PGP: 1024R/32B8FAA1: 97 EA 1D 47 72 3F 28 47 6B 7E 39 CC 56 E4 C1 47 GPG: 1024D/3E1D0C1C: CA12 09E0 E8D5 8870 5839 932A 614D 4C34 3E1D 0C1C But without faith it is impossible to please him; for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.Hebrews 11:6
Re: A language by any other name
On Fri, 14 Sep 2001, Junichi Uekawa wrote: Wouter Verhelst [EMAIL PROTECTED] immo vero scripsit On Thu, 13 Sep 2001, Nick Phillips wrote: [*] By definition, the English speak English. What the Americans speak is different to what the English speak. Therefore the Americans don't speak English. That would mean the Belgian would speak Belgian, right? I doubt it... No, Belgian would not speak Belgian, but they are Belgian and thus it can be belgian, as it were. Ah. And would that mean belgian dutch (also known as flemish), belgian french (also known as walloon), or belgian german? What I meant to say is simple: you can't know what language people speak by having a look at the country they live in. Thus, the english do _not_, by definition, speak english. -- wouter dot verhelst at advalvas dot be Human knowledge belongs to the world -- from the movie Antitrust rm -rf /bin/laden
Re: A language by any other name
On Fri, Sep 14, 2001 at 10:47:18AM +0200, Wouter Verhelst wrote: What I meant to say is simple: you can't know what language people speak by having a look at the country they live in. Thus, the english do _not_, by definition, speak english. I never said that you could. You're splitting hairs that aren't worth splitting. English is, by definition, the language spoken by the English. That doesn't mean to say that for every people there will be a similarly named language. And the fact that there is not a similarly named language for every nationality does not in turn mean that my assertion that English is by definition the language spoken by the English is incorrect. I also implied that it'd be rather more cunning to argue the toss about this off-list than on. Still, you can't win 'em all... -- Nick Phillips -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] You can create your own opportunities this week. Blackmail a senior executive.
Re: franc,ais locale (was Re: A language by any other name)
Le ven, sep 14, 2001, à 08:54:40 +0100, Oliver Elphick a écrit: Cyrille Chepelov wrote: Le ven, sep 14, 2001, 04:13:31 +0900, Junichi Uekawa a crit: ... (by the way, does the line mutt added at the very beginning of this post display completely on your screen ?) Your message didn't specify any character set, so the non-ASCII characters seem to have been dropped. damn, you're right. -- Cyrille -- Grumpf.
Re: franc,ais locale (was Re: A language by any other name)
Junichi Uekawa [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On a very different topic, I cannot even type in franc,ais in my system, and it seems to be a character not available in the default locale which is C. How are people meant to handle this? I have LC_CTYPE=en_US (or LC_CTYPE=en_US.ISO-8859-1) on my .bashrc. Being able to type the character is a different problem. I use compose to get ç out of , and c. -- Marcelo | Oook? [EMAIL PROTECTED] |
Re: franc,ais locale (was Re: A language by any other name)
On Fri, Sep 14, 2001 at 08:54:40AM +0100, Oliver Elphick wrote: Cyrille Chepelov wrote: Le ven, sep 14, 2001, 04:13:31 +0900, Junichi Uekawa a crit: ... (by the way, does the line mutt added at the very beginning of this post display completely on your screen ?) Your message didn't specify any character set, so the non-ASCII characters seem to have been dropped. They haven't been dropped, your MUA is ignoring them. Because of this very common problem, I have aliased a few locales in my mutt config: charset-hook US-ASCII ISO-8859-1 charset-hook x-unknown ISO-8859-1 charset-hook windows-1250 CP1250 charset-hook windows-1251 CP1251 charset-hook windows-1252 CP1252 Thanks, Carlos. -- _ _ _| _ _ | _ . _ | _ http://laviola.org Debian-BR Project (_(_|| |(_)_) |(_|\/|(_)|(_| uin#: 981913 (icq) debian-br.sf.net Linux: the choice of a GNU generation - Registered Linux User #103594
Re: franc,ais locale (was Re: A language by any other name)
On Fri, Sep 14, 2001 at 09:39:10AM +0200, Cyrille Chepelov wrote: (by the way, does the line mutt added at the very beginning of this post display completely on your screen ?) Here it does. The message I got was properly labeled as ISO-8859-1, too. -- David Starner - [EMAIL PROTECTED] Pointless website: http://dvdeug.dhis.org I don't care if Bill personally has my name and reads my email and laughs at me. In fact, I'd be rather honored. - Joseph_Greg
Re: franc,ais locale (was Re: A language by any other name)
Oliver Elphick olly@lfix.co.uk writes: Cyrille Chepelov wrote: Le ven, sep 14, 2001, 04:13:31 +0900, Junichi Uekawa a crit: ... (by the way, does the line mutt added at the very beginning of this post display completely on your screen ?) Your message didn't specify any character set, so the non-ASCII characters seem to have been dropped. ? It displayed for me, and I do see: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit in Cyrille's headers, which look fine.
Re: franc,ais locale (was Re: A language by any other name)
Le ven, sep 14, 2001, à 09:39:55 -0500, David Starner a écrit: On Fri, Sep 14, 2001 at 09:39:10AM +0200, Cyrille Chepelov wrote: (by the way, does the line mutt added at the very beginning of this post display completely on your screen ?) Here it does. The message I got was properly labeled as ISO-8859-1, too. it looks like it's because your default locale is 8859-1. I've re-read my message, and nothing there was giving hints to MUA's not using 8859-1 by default. Oh, well, let's kill this subthread -- a misconfigured MUA here, nothing more. -- Cyrille -- Grumpf.
Re: A language by any other name
On Thu, Sep 13, 2001 at 11:07:43AM +0200, Marcelo E. Magallon wrote: My bug was triggered by the fact that gdm offers a long selection of languages, among them English (without bells and whistles, just plain GDM does not offer english. It offers POSIX/C English, which sets lang to C. gdm versions above 2.0 use a different method of selecting locale information, so if you were using C in 2.0, you need to reselect the locale once with the new version. This bug has already been filed upstream... -- Ryan Murray, Debian Developer ([EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]) The opinions expressed here are my own. pgp8Snvx2m2g8.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: franc,ais locale (was Re: A language by any other name)
Le ven, sep 14, 2001, à 12:39:31 -0500, David Starner a écrit: On Fri, Sep 14, 2001 at 06:02:45PM +0200, Cyrille Chepelov wrote: it looks like it's because your default locale is 8859-1. Nope. My default locale is UTF-8. As someone else said, your headers look fine. I stand corrected. Indeed, before I tweaked them to output 8859-15, they did output 8859-1 correctly. I'll probably follow Radovan's document in the next days or weeks, anyway. -- Cyrille -- Grumpf.
Re: A language by any other name
On Thu, Sep 13, 2001 at 11:07:43AM +0200, Marcelo E. Magallon wrote: But Ben wants a consensus, so I'm asking here. I would alias english to en_UK, since it is reasonable to choose the flavour spoken in the language of origin. -- Met vriendelijke groet / with kind regards, Guus Sliepen [EMAIL PROTECTED] pgp5LzGx3Z12f.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: A language by any other name
On Thu, Sep 13, 2001 at 11:07:43AM +0200, Marcelo E. Magallon wrote: But Ben wants a consensus, so I'm asking here. FWIW, that file *is* shipped with locales as /etc/locale.alias, even if there's no sensible default for some entries there, as I have shown above. 2 aliases, english for the English, american for the Americans. -- Nick Phillips -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] People are beginning to notice you. Try dressing before you leave the house.
Re: A language by any other name
Marcelo E. Magallon [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: My bug was triggered by the fact that gdm offers a long selection of languages, among them English (without bells and whistles, just plain old English) and in case you select that, it sets the environment variable LANG to that, english. Maybe it should ask if you want british or american english. Trying to decide which one is 'the' English is probably a good recipe for a flame war with no result. -- David N. Welton Consulting: http://www.dedasys.com/ Free Software: http://people.debian.org/~davidw/ Apache Tcl: http://tcl.apache.org/ Personal: http://www.efn.org/~davidw/
Re: A language by any other name
Nick Phillips [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: 2 aliases, english for the English, american for the Americans. I don't speak 'american', though, I speak 'english', and will look for that, as will the rest of my compatriots, when asked to select the language I speak. Nice try for a compromise, but it won't work. British English and American English is ok, though, and is probably the only fair way to do this (or use English(American) and English(British) so they sort next to one another?). Before we go off on too much of a flame war here, *please* note that Marcelo says that Ben wants a consensus. Does anyone believe that a *consensus* is possible? -- David N. Welton Consulting: http://www.dedasys.com/ Free Software: http://people.debian.org/~davidw/ Apache Tcl: http://tcl.apache.org/ Personal: http://www.efn.org/~davidw/
Re: A language by any other name
On Thu, Sep 13, 2001 at 11:46:06AM +0200, David N. Welton wrote: 2 aliases, english for the English, american for the Americans. I don't speak 'american', though, I speak 'english', and will look for that, as will the rest of my compatriots, when asked to select the language I speak. Nice try for a compromise, but it won't work. OK then, if the English aren't allowed to speak english [*], 2 aliases english-british and english-american. Before we go off on too much of a flame war here, *please* note that Marcelo says that Ben wants a consensus. Does anyone believe that a *consensus* is possible? Based on pragmatism, yes. Based on everyone having their ideal, no. Cheers, Nick [*] By definition, the English speak English. What the Americans speak is different to what the English speak. Therefore the Americans don't speak English. Simple as that ;) I am however prepared to let it go in the interest of avoiding a pointless flamewar. Happy to continue by private mail, though. Limited offer, for a short time only... -- Nick Phillips -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] You've been leading a dog's life. Stay off the furniture.
Re: A language by any other name
Marcelo E. Magallon [EMAIL PROTECTED] immo vero scripsit deutsch de_DE.ISO-8859-1 french fr_FR.ISO-8859-1 german de_DE.ISO-8859-1 portuguese pt_PT.ISO-8859-1 spanish es_ES.ISO-8859-1 If these refer to the people, then the problem is simple. The flame war would look at the direction of why don't we have scots while we have english? english for EN and american for US seems to be a logical solution. Discussions claiming that people in the US are not American, or American people should not default to English language, should really not be done here. If people are expecting language to be there, yes, we know there exists variations of languages. regards, junichi -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.netfort.gr.jp/~dancer
Re: A language by any other name
On Thu, Sep 13, 2001 at 11:07:43AM +0200, Marcelo E. Magallon wrote: Hi, some days ago I submitted a bug (111465) against the locales package asking for the inclusion of the alias english for the locale en_US.ISO-8851-1. Ben Collins, the maintainer of locales, swiftly closed it with this message: Find a consensus on whether english should be en_US or en_UK and I'll do it. As I fail to think you will find this consensus, I'm closing this bug. My bug was triggered by the fact that gdm offers a long selection of languages, among them English (without bells and whistles, just plain old English) and in case you select that, it sets the environment variable LANG to that, english. Since that locale doesn't exist, and there isn't an alias for that, this causes some programs to emit spurious warnings about undefined/invalid locales. I don't care. For me the solution is to set LANG in my .bashrc (or unset it, which is what I actually do -- I noticed the bug because this was a new installation where my standard environment wasn't available yet). Since other users are likely to hit this, too, I submitted at bug. At first I was going to submit it against gdm, for setting LANG to a bad value, but then I noticed /etc/locale.alias contains things like: What if the gdm pkg cut off `plain' english? Maybe a choice among english_british and english_american could me more correct. What about english_italian also :) ? We speak brooklino instead of plain english, generally ... -- Francesco P. Lovergine
Re: A language by any other name
On Thu, 2001-09-13 at 11:35, David N. Welton wrote: Marcelo E. Magallon [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: My bug was triggered by the fact that gdm offers a long selection of languages, among them English (without bells and whistles, just plain old English) and in case you select that, it sets the environment variable LANG to that, english. Maybe it should ask if you want british or american english. Trying to decide which one is 'the' English is probably a good recipe for a flame war with no result. why? we know what is *the* english, the one that originated in england. (note how the two words have the same root, eng-?) as a pratical rule, i suggest to assign the language 'name' to the locale of the coutry that originated it. spain for spanish, italy for italian, france for french, etc. everybody is accepting that on other languages, don't see why the americans should do different... :( ciao, federico -- Federico Di Gregorio MIXAD LIVE Chief of Research Technology [EMAIL PROTECTED] Debian GNU/Linux Developer Italian Press Contact[EMAIL PROTECTED] Put a GNOME on your desktop! [http://www.gnome.org] -- brought to you by One Line Spam
Re: A language by any other name
On Thursday 13 September 2001 11:07, Marcelo E. Magallon wrote: deutsch de_DE.ISO-8859-1 françaisfr_FR.ISO-8859-1 french fr_FR.ISO-8859-1 german de_DE.ISO-8859-1 portuguese pt_PT.ISO-8859-1 spanish es_ES.ISO-8859-1 Okey. Then english SHOULD point to en_UK.ISO-8859-1. If disagreement with americans should block this inclusion, portuguese should be removed too. Since the most frequencly use portuguese is Brazilian. Consistency rules -Allan
Re: A language by any other name
Federico writes: ...spain for spanish, italy for italian, france for french, etc. everybody is accepting that on other languages, don't see why the americans should do different... Right. Swiss for Switzerland, belgian for Belgium, canadian for Canada, mexican for Mexico, brazilian for Brazil... -- John Hasler [EMAIL PROTECTED] Dancing Horse Hill Elmwood, Wisconsin
Re: A language by any other name
On Thu, Sep 13, 2001 at 02:34:45PM +0200, Federico Di Gregorio wrote: Maybe it should ask if you want british or american english. why? we know what is *the* english, the one that originated in england. (note how the two words have the same root, eng-?) as a pratical rule, i suggest to assign the language 'name' to the locale of the coutry that originated it. spain for spanish, italy for italian, france for french, etc. everybody is accepting that on other languages, don't see why the americans should do different... :( I agree. This argument sounds reasonable. If spanish maps to Spain, then english should map to England. Drew -- PGP public key available at http://dparsons.webjump.com/drewskey.txt Fingerprint: A110 EAE1 D7D2 8076 5FE0 EC0A B6CE 7041 6412 4E4A
RE: A language by any other name
What's the problem? German is spoken outside Germany. That what's spoken outside Germany is not the same as that what's spoken inside Germany, but that what's spoken outside is still called German (officially), as far as I know. That is to say, de_AT.ISO-8859-1 is as german as de_DE.ISO-8859-1. The same goes for French, Portuguese and Spanish, this being the extreme case since it's spoken in 20+ countries outside Spain but it's still called Spanish in all of them (ignore Castellano, please). What makes English different? In fact, after thinking about this, and given what's stored in that file, I'd change my bug to please alias english to en_UK.ISO-8859-1 (or more appropiately en_UK.ISO-8859-15) In every app where I was presented the choice I had two -- English(British), English(American). We should do the same in the alias file. Better question is why does gdm expect English there when we don't have it. Are other dists or the upstream locale maint making this choice?
Re: A language by any other name
Federico Di Gregorio wrote: On Thu, 2001-09-13 at 11:35, David N. Welton wrote: Marcelo E. Magallon [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: My bug was triggered by the fact that gdm offers a long selection of languages, among them English (without bells and whistles, just plain old English) and in case you select that, it sets the environment variable LANG to that, english. Maybe it should ask if you want british or american english. Trying to decide which one is 'the' English is probably a good recipe for a flame war with no result. why? we know what is *the* english, the one that originated in england. (note how the two words have the same root, eng-?) as a pratical rule, i suggest to assign the language 'name' to the locale of the coutry that originated it. spain for spanish, italy for italian, france for french, etc. everybody is accepting that on other languages, don't see why the americans should do different... :( Closest parallel would be pt/pt_BR, since Brazil/Portugal is another example of where the daughter country has a greater population and rivals the mother country as cultural center. Actually, probably more so. So that precedent would argue for english - en_UK. As a southerner, I would object to yank - en_US. :-) Considering our troubles, maybe it should be anguished - en_US. :-(
Re: A language by any other name
On Thu, 2001-09-13 at 16:39, John Hasler wrote: Federico writes: ...spain for spanish, italy for italian, france for french, etc. everybody is accepting that on other languages, don't see why the americans should do different... Right. Swiss for Switzerland, belgian for Belgium, canadian for Canada, mexican for Mexico, brazilian for Brazil... why did you inverted coutry and language (and the meaning of my post)? -- Federico Di Gregorio MIXAD LIVE Chief of Research Technology [EMAIL PROTECTED] Debian GNU/Linux Developer Italian Press Contact[EMAIL PROTECTED] The reverse side also has a reverse side. -- Japanese proverb
Re: A language by any other name
On Thu, Sep 13, 2001 at 04:11:39PM +0200, Allan Sandfeld Jensen wrote: Okey. Then english SHOULD point to en_UK.ISO-8859-1. If disagreement with americans should block this inclusion, portuguese should be removed too. Since the most frequencly use portuguese is Brazilian. Sure. GDM should not be emitting the language names; it should emit the proper locale names. IMO, the alias file should be purely a local thing; it's just too adhoc to standardize on, especially as which locales exist is also local choise. Anyway, for most people, English is the default language of the system, and that English is LC_MESSAGES=C, not LC_MESSAGES=en_UK. If we're changing this for GDM, it'd be better for GDM to call English C or en_US, so there's no changes. -- David Starner - [EMAIL PROTECTED] Pointless website: http://dvdeug.dhis.org I don't care if Bill personally has my name and reads my email and laughs at me. In fact, I'd be rather honored. - Joseph_Greg
Re: A language by any other name
Em 13 Sep 2001 09:39:07 -0500 John Hasler [EMAIL PROTECTED] escreveu: Federico writes: ...spain for spanish, italy for italian, france for french, etc. everybody is accepting that on other languages, don't see why the americans should do different... Right. Swiss for Switzerland, belgian for Belgium, canadian for Canada, mexican for Mexico, brazilian for Brazil... hmmm I think he meant the opposite... brazil to portuguese as spoken in Brasil, canada for english/french(?) spoken on canada, etc... []s! -- Gustavo Noronha Silva - kov http://www.metainfo.org/kov ** | .''`. | Debian GNU/Linux: http://www.debian.org| | : :' : | Debian BR...: http://debian-br.sourceforge.net | | `. `'` | Be Happy! Be FREE! | | `-| Think globally, act locally! | **
Re: A language by any other name
Em Fri, 14 Sep 2001 00:11:06 +1000 Drew Parsons [EMAIL PROTECTED] escreveu: I agree. This argument sounds reasonable. If spanish maps to Spain, then english should map to England. nah that's not it... if I understand it correctly, united states would map to es_US and england would map to en_EN(UK?)... []s! -- Gustavo Noronha Silva - kov http://www.metainfo.org/kov ** | .''`. | Debian GNU/Linux: http://www.debian.org| | : :' : | Debian BR...: http://debian-br.sourceforge.net | | `. `'` | Be Happy! Be FREE! | | `-| Think globally, act locally! | **
Re: A language by any other name
Em Thu, 13 Sep 2001 19:15:28 +0900 Junichi Uekawa [EMAIL PROTECTED] escreveu: Marcelo E. Magallon [EMAIL PROTECTED] immo vero scripsit deutsch de_DE.ISO-8859-1 french fr_FR.ISO-8859-1 german de_DE.ISO-8859-1 portuguese pt_PT.ISO-8859-1 spanish es_ES.ISO-8859-1 english for EN and american for US seems to be a logical solution. I prefer to map languages to countries as was proposed, by the way brazilian portuguese doesn't have an entry on that list =( []s! -- Gustavo Noronha Silva - kov http://www.metainfo.org/kov ** | .''`. | Debian GNU/Linux: http://www.debian.org| | : :' : | Debian BR...: http://debian-br.sourceforge.net | | `. `'` | Be Happy! Be FREE! | | `-| Think globally, act locally! | **
Re: A language by any other name
On Thu, 2001-09-13 at 18:26, Gustavo Noronha Silva wrote: Em Fri, 14 Sep 2001 00:11:06 +1000 Drew Parsons [EMAIL PROTECTED] escreveu: I agree. This argument sounds reasonable. If spanish maps to Spain, then english should map to England. nah that's not it... if I understand it correctly, united states would map to es_US and england would map to en_EN(UK?)... my english is really that poor? i meant that if french maps to the fr_FR locale and so on i don't see why there are problems mapping english to en_EN. ok, english is _also_ how the americans call their language, but i think it was called english even before Colombo, right? -- Federico Di Gregorio MIXAD LIVE Chief of Research Technology [EMAIL PROTECTED] Debian GNU/Linux Developer Italian Press Contact[EMAIL PROTECTED] Best friends are often failed lovers. -- Me
Re: A language by any other name
On Thu, Sep 13, 2001 at 08:06:22PM +0200, Federico Di Gregorio wrote: On Thu, 2001-09-13 at 18:26, Gustavo Noronha Silva wrote: Em Fri, 14 Sep 2001 00:11:06 +1000 Drew Parsons [EMAIL PROTECTED] escreveu: I agree. This argument sounds reasonable. If spanish maps to Spain, then english should map to England. nah that's not it... if I understand it correctly, united states would map to es_US and england would map to en_EN(UK?)... my english is really that poor? I don't think so. I understood perfectly what you meant. english is _also_ how the americans call their language, but i think it was called english even before Colombo, right? It's en_UK, btw. And the locale code for pre-Columbus English is enm_UK (assuming that the locale system uses 3 character codes where a 2 character one is not available), not en_UK. -- David Starner - [EMAIL PROTECTED] Pointless website: http://dvdeug.dhis.org I don't care if Bill personally has my name and reads my email and laughs at me. In fact, I'd be rather honored. - Joseph_Greg
Re: A language by any other name
Don't forget Dutch, French and German in Belgium. michael heyes Gustavo Noronha Silva [EMAIL PROTECTED] on 09/13/2001 11:55:08 AM To: debian-devel@lists.debian.org cc: Subject: Re: A language by any other name Em 13 Sep 2001 09:39:07 -0500 John Hasler [EMAIL PROTECTED] escreveu: Federico writes: ...spain for spanish, italy for italian, france for french, etc. everybody is accepting that on other languages, don't see why the americans should do different... Right. Swiss for Switzerland, belgian for Belgium, canadian for Canada, mexican for Mexico, brazilian for Brazil... hmmm I think he meant the opposite... brazil to portuguese as spoken in Brasil, canada for english/french(?) spoken on canada, etc... []s! -- Gustavo Noronha Silva - kov http://www.metainfo.org/kov ** | .''`. | Debian GNU/Linux: http://www.debian.org| | : :' : | Debian BR...: http://debian-br.sourceforge.net | | `. `'` | Be Happy! Be FREE! | | `-| Think globally, act locally! | ** -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: A language by any other name
On Thu, 13 Sep 2001, Nick Phillips wrote: [*] By definition, the English speak English. What the Americans speak is different to what the English speak. Therefore the Americans don't speak English. That would mean the Belgian would speak Belgian, right? I doubt it... -- wouter dot verhelst at advalvas dot be Human knowledge belongs to the world -- from the movie Antitrust rm -rf /bin/laden
Re: A language by any other name
On Thu, 2001-09-13 at 20:32, David Starner wrote: english is _also_ how the americans call their language, but i think it was called english even before Colombo, right? It's en_UK, btw. And the locale code for pre-Columbus English ack. just a typo... g is enm_UK (assuming that the locale system uses 3 character codes where a 2 character one is not available), not en_UK. hey, i'd like to know _why_ enm... :) ciao, federico -- Federico Di Gregorio MIXAD LIVE Chief of Research Technology [EMAIL PROTECTED] Debian GNU/Linux Developer Italian Press Contact[EMAIL PROTECTED] Best friends are often failed lovers. -- Me
Re: A language by any other name
On Fri, Sep 14, 2001 at 01:01:12AM +0200, Federico Di Gregorio wrote: On Thu, 2001-09-13 at 20:32, David Starner wrote: is enm_UK (assuming that the locale system uses 3 character codes where a 2 character one is not available), not en_UK. hey, i'd like to know _why_ enm... :) We use the ISO 639-1 values for locales. At which point we need to exceed those values (and the KDE project has hit that point) we'll probably use the ISO 639-2 (T) values, which is an extended list of languages using 3 character codes. enm is Middle English (1000-1500 AD) in that list. -- David Starner - [EMAIL PROTECTED] Pointless website: http://dvdeug.dhis.org I don't care if Bill personally has my name and reads my email and laughs at me. In fact, I'd be rather honored. - Joseph_Greg
Re: A language by any other name
michael heyes writes: Don't forget Dutch, French and German in Belgium. French and english in Canada, spanish and mayan in Guatemala, german and french in Switzerland... and yet the US gets singled out for criticism because we refer to our most common language as english. Why? There is no one to one relationship between languages and nations, or even a one to many relationship. Are US spanish speakers to be told that they must live in Spain just because they asserted that their preferred language was spanish? -- John Hasler [EMAIL PROTECTED] (John Hasler) Dancing Horse Hill Elmwood, WI
Re: A language by any other name
Em 13 Sep 2001 20:06:22 +0200 Federico Di Gregorio [EMAIL PROTECTED] escreveu: nah that's not it... if I understand it correctly, united states would map to es_US and england would map to en_EN(UK?)... my english is really that poor? i meant that if french maps to the fr_FR no, your english is not poor, yes I really meant that... you said french maps to fr_FR but what was proposed was not this... the proposal was france maps to fr_FR... locale and so on i don't see why there are problems mapping english to en_EN. ok, english is _also_ how the americans call their language, but i think it was called english even before Colombo, right? that would confuse people... []s! -- Gustavo Noronha Silva - kov http://www.metainfo.org/kov ** | .''`. | Debian GNU/Linux: http://www.debian.org| | : :' : | Debian BR...: http://debian-br.sourceforge.net | | `. `'` | Be Happy! Be FREE! | | `-| Think globally, act locally! | **
