20 ms·

Why are there so many Canadians in India?

141 points by fireattack 5y ago

thunderbong 5y ago
That was interesting. Well as soon as I read the first paragraph I knew it had to with the UX and nothing else.
scottrogowski 5y ago
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.
- selimthegrim 5y ago
  My money was on all the Punjabis going back and forth to BC
  - barry-cotter 5y ago
    Wouldn’t it be more informative to say Sikhs?
    - titanomachy 5y ago
      A Punjabi Sikh can renounce his religion but he would still be Punjabi. (Sikhism is the dominant religion of the Punjab region.)
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
    - Ar-Curunir 5y ago
      There are many non-Sikh Punjabis.
    - selimthegrim 5y ago
      My family hailed from East Punjab before the Partition and wasn’t (and isn’t) Sikh.
    - arrayjumper 5y ago
      (Nearly) All Sikhs are Punjabi but not all Punjabis are Sikh.
    - sfifs 5y ago
      Most Punjabis are not Sikhs. If you live in North America, a lot of Punjabis you may have come across may have been Sikhs.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - hadlock 5y ago
      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.
- deleted 5y ago
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- ra7 5y ago
  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.
- echlipse 5y ago
  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.
  - tkgally 5y ago
    > the english dialect here is English-India 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.
    - nindalf 5y ago
      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 (₹).
    - echlipse 5y ago
      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.
  - 5y ago
- vishnugupta 5y ago
  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.
- raghava 5y ago
  Kannadiga* here. very interesting theory. 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! *people from Karnataka who speak Kannada.
  - mangamadaiyan 5y ago
    Not too sure about Kanglish being the norm - I'd guess it depends upon which part of Bengaluru (making a wild guess here) you're in? Where I live, that sentence would usually turn out to be something like "Naale inda lockdown, vahanagaLu yavdu Ache barubaaradu".
    - raghava 5y ago
      >> Where I live, that sentence would usually turn out to be something like "Naale inda lockdown, vahanagaLu yavdu Ache barubaaradu". Mass media has gone bonkers my friend. If you haven't been following, they even had a headline "first night curfew, hegirutte gottaa!?" with "first night" in a different color. It's all about masala headlines. Nobody bothers about textbook Kannada anymore, except of course students and hapless Kannada teachers. Media out here are total sellouts who are just busy peddling absolute BS to their viewers, anything and everything for TRPs
      - mangamadaiyan 5y ago
        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).
Syzygies 5y ago
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!"
- Reason077 5y ago
  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!
- yesbabyyes 5y ago
  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.
  - Syzygies 5y ago
    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.
jameshart 5y ago
Half expected it to be a hilarious mix-up with the 'Kannada' localization mapping...
motohagiography 5y ago
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.)
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mjbrownie 5y ago
perhaps... "Never ascribe to stupidity that which can be explained by laziness"
qart 5y ago
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.
- fireattack 5y ago
  But Canada mainly uses letter instead of A4 IIRC (correct me if I'm wrong, not Canadian myself).
  - ComputerGuru 5y ago
    Canada uses the same inch-based US sizes but denoted in mm (called P sizes, I think - I’m also not Canadian).
    - dledesma 5y ago
      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.
  - qart 5y ago
    You're right. But when I hit Ctrl-P from any page, it defaults to printing in A4. I guess the desktop locale settings are in charge of that.
- gspr 5y ago
  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!
young_unixer 5y ago
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.
- swiley 5y ago
  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.)
shivbhatt 5y ago
Because, in India you will confuse, too many religions, languages, cultures, festivals. After per 1 km you will fill change in language & culture.
pseingatl 5y ago
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.
- TMWNN 5y ago
  Yes, the Canadians of Convenience https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/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?
rishav_sharan 5y ago
My money is on all the Indian-Canadians going back and forth between the two countries. Canda has a substantial amount of Indian immigrants
baybal2 5y ago
There is a huge Indian diaspora in Canada obviously. 1m+ citizens, and few times more of that of PRs, and frequent visitors. No wonder many of the go back, and forth for seasonal work.
nottorp 5y ago
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. Thus, all my machines are set to English.
sumanthvepa 5y ago
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.
ArkanExplorer 5y ago
Each year there are almost 10x as many Indians migrating to Canada as there are Americans: https://www.immigration.ca/where-will-canadas-401000-immigrants-come-from-in-2021 https://www.immigration.ca/where-will-canadas-401000-immigra... 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.
- golemiprague 5y ago
  Any country that open migration for Chinese or Indians is risking becoming another China or India just because of the sheer number of people in those countries. If countries want diversity they should insist on equally diverse migration from other countries/cultures, not 2 or 3 sources of most immigrants, that's not diversity, it is a takeover.
- kiliantics 5y ago
  > Despite being a country of European heritage 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.
freddealmeida 5y ago
Honestly, Canada is horrible right now. The question should be is why do Canadians not want to go home?
- stackedinserter 5y ago
  What makes Canada worse than India?
manishsharan 5y ago
The real question is when will Indians see en-IND in the options ?
screye 5y ago
> en-CA is alphabetically before en-GB. 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.

141 points by fireattack 5y ago

That was interesting. Well as soon as I read the first paragraph I knew it had to with the UX and nothing else.

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.

selimthegrim 5y ago
My money was on all the Punjabis going back and forth to BC
- barry-cotter 5y ago
  Wouldn’t it be more informative to say Sikhs?
  - titanomachy 5y ago
    A Punjabi Sikh can renounce his religion but he would still be Punjabi. (Sikhism is the dominant religion of the Punjab region.)
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - Ar-Curunir 5y ago
    There are many non-Sikh Punjabis.
  - selimthegrim 5y ago
    My family hailed from East Punjab before the Partition and wasn’t (and isn’t) Sikh.
  - arrayjumper 5y ago
    (Nearly) All Sikhs are Punjabi but not all Punjabis are Sikh.
  - sfifs 5y ago
    Most Punjabis are not Sikhs. If you live in North America, a lot of Punjabis you may have come across may have been Sikhs.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - hadlock 5y ago
    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.
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ra7 5y ago
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.
echlipse 5y ago
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.
- tkgally 5y ago
  > the english dialect here is English-India 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.
  - nindalf 5y ago
    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 (₹).
  - echlipse 5y ago
    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.
- 5y ago
vishnugupta 5y ago
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.
raghava 5y ago
Kannadiga* here. very interesting theory. 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! *people from Karnataka who speak Kannada.
- mangamadaiyan 5y ago
  Not too sure about Kanglish being the norm - I'd guess it depends upon which part of Bengaluru (making a wild guess here) you're in? Where I live, that sentence would usually turn out to be something like "Naale inda lockdown, vahanagaLu yavdu Ache barubaaradu".
  - raghava 5y ago
    >> Where I live, that sentence would usually turn out to be something like "Naale inda lockdown, vahanagaLu yavdu Ache barubaaradu". Mass media has gone bonkers my friend. If you haven't been following, they even had a headline "first night curfew, hegirutte gottaa!?" with "first night" in a different color. It's all about masala headlines. Nobody bothers about textbook Kannada anymore, except of course students and hapless Kannada teachers. Media out here are total sellouts who are just busy peddling absolute BS to their viewers, anything and everything for TRPs
    - mangamadaiyan 5y ago
      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).

Syzygies 5y ago

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!"

Reason077 5y ago
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!
yesbabyyes 5y ago
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.
- Syzygies 5y ago
  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.

jameshart 5y ago

Half expected it to be a hilarious mix-up with the 'Kannada' localization mapping...

motohagiography 5y ago

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.)

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mjbrownie 5y ago

perhaps... "Never ascribe to stupidity that which can be explained by laziness"

qart 5y ago

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.

fireattack 5y ago
But Canada mainly uses letter instead of A4 IIRC (correct me if I'm wrong, not Canadian myself).
- ComputerGuru 5y ago
  Canada uses the same inch-based US sizes but denoted in mm (called P sizes, I think - I’m also not Canadian).
  - dledesma 5y ago
    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.
- qart 5y ago
  You're right. But when I hit Ctrl-P from any page, it defaults to printing in A4. I guess the desktop locale settings are in charge of that.
gspr 5y ago
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!

young_unixer 5y ago

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.

swiley 5y ago
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.)

shivbhatt 5y ago

Because, in India you will confuse, too many religions, languages, cultures, festivals. After per 1 km you will fill change in language & culture.

pseingatl 5y ago

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.

TMWNN 5y ago
Yes, the Canadians of Convenience https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/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?

rishav_sharan 5y ago

My money is on all the Indian-Canadians going back and forth between the two countries. Canda has a substantial amount of Indian immigrants

baybal2 5y ago

There is a huge Indian diaspora in Canada obviously. 1m+ citizens, and few times more of that of PRs, and frequent visitors. No wonder many of the go back, and forth for seasonal work.

nottorp 5y ago

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. Thus, all my machines are set to English.

sumanthvepa 5y ago

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.

ArkanExplorer 5y ago

Each year there are almost 10x as many Indians migrating to Canada as there are Americans: https://www.immigration.ca/where-will-canadas-401000-immigrants-come-from-in-2021 https://www.immigration.ca/where-will-canadas-401000-immigra... 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.

golemiprague 5y ago
Any country that open migration for Chinese or Indians is risking becoming another China or India just because of the sheer number of people in those countries. If countries want diversity they should insist on equally diverse migration from other countries/cultures, not 2 or 3 sources of most immigrants, that's not diversity, it is a takeover.
kiliantics 5y ago
> Despite being a country of European heritage 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.

freddealmeida 5y ago

Honestly, Canada is horrible right now. The question should be is why do Canadians not want to go home?

stackedinserter 5y ago
What makes Canada worse than India?

manishsharan 5y ago

The real question is when will Indians see en-IND in the options ?

screye 5y ago

> en-CA is alphabetically before en-GB. 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.