On Tue, 2006-08-29 at 10:39 +0900, Kazunari Hirano wrote: > Hi, > https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-list/2006-August/msg03475.html > This is an interesting and long thread :) > What do you think about "British" language?
I think it usually means British English rather than US English. In Britain we spell things differently eg USA Center, theater, color British Centre, theatre, colour etc There are different meanings too. Take the following words rubber - in British English its an eraser, in US a contraceptive torch - in British English a flashlight in US a burning hot thing So if I said pass me the torch to look for the gas leak an American is likely to panic. If I say "that child needs a rubber" in an American school it would raise a few eyebrows. Then there is pronunciation - Most English people pronounce route - root, most americans pronounce it rowt. One of the reasons that an EN-NL project was proposed was to look after and maintain the British English localisations of OOo. Australian English and I think New Zealand is nearer to British English than US English. These issues are particularly important to schools because schools in English teach British spelling not American. It goes beyond dictionaries. Ideally all the messages and help files should be fully localised to British English. Its ironic that although US English is the main medium for OOo, British English is the one language that is blocked from having its own official NL project by the other NL projects and the project leads. Imagine if they did that to say Japanese. If I had more time I'd be tempted to just set one up unilaterally but I am committed to too many other projects at the moment. Maybe some time in the future. It would certainly help the marketing effort for OOo in British English speaking countries because some people feel strongly about their language and cultural heritage so if nothing else it has a good chance of getting more committed active support into the project. Ian -- www.theINGOTS.org www.schoolforge.org.uk www.opendocumentfellowship.org --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
