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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 comp
by 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 agoBut Canada mainly uses letter instead of A4 IIRC (correct me if I'm wrong, not Canadian myself).
- ComputerGuru 5y agoCanada uses the same inch-based US sizes but denoted in mm (called P sizes, I think - I’m also not Canadian).
- dledesma 5y agoCanadian 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 agoYou'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 agoThat'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!
- lebuffon 5y agoRemember: Canada is the state that didn't "unite". :)
- dfxm12 5y agoI for some strange reason assumed that en_CA used non-metric measurements Depending on the measurement, many actual Canadians do use non-metric units: https://www.bclions.com/roster/ https://www.bclions.com/roster/ If you're old enough, maybe you remember a time when Canada wasn't using the metric system at all. It wasn't that long ago that they were going through metrication: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_Canada https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_Canada
- rubatuga 5y agoen-CA has the best date format: yyyy-MM-dd
- ithkuil 5y agoApparently it's not obvious to all why this is the best, so let's be explicit: Dates in this format can be sorted lexicographically
- the_pwner224 5y agoIt's also unambiguous. Nobody uses yyyy-dd-mm, whereas xx/xx/yy can be misinterpreted.
- gmueckl 5y agoI distinctly remember SQL Server 2000 pulling that one on me. I had switched a DB app over to using ISO dates exclusively in its queries to avoid the month-day-ordering confusion and then the bloody thing earnestly started to parse yyyy-mm-dd dates as yyyy-dd-mm at every chance it got. So much for unambiguous date formats!
- skissane 5y agoApparently, Kazakhstan uses yyyy-dd-mm, but only in Kazakh (not in Russian.) I guess if we are only talking about English speakers, that’s not an issue, since if Kazakhs don’t write dates that way in Russian, I presume they wouldn’t do it that way in English either
- bawolff 5y agoAs a canadian, i'm pretty sure i've never seen anyone use that date format.
- slavik81 5y agoIf you do your taxes on paper, you'll have entered your date of birth in that way (upper right corner): https://www.canada.ca/content/dam/cra-arc/formspubs/pbg/5015-r/5015-r-20e.pdf https://www.canada.ca/content/dam/cra-arc/formspubs/pbg/5015...
- starky 5y agoThose reasons don't make sense though. In Canada the official spellings are a weird mixture of British and US English, and mostly British spelling is used. Additionally, the US standard sizes of paper are used in Canada, so that wouldn't be correct either.
- qart 5y agoWhat a bizarre comment! Since you already know what spellings work for me, which of the other locale packages, in your esteemed opinion, should I be using to make sense?
- starky 5y ago>I want spellcheckers to default to American Literally in your comment you say you want American English spelling. Which Canadian English is not. Every point I made was directly in response to what you wrote.
- qart 5y ago> Literally in your comment you say you want American English spelling. Which Canadian English is not. English orthography does not have a binary distinction from one dialect to another. It is absurd to talk about them in such a binary manner.
- bawolff 5y agoAmerican spellings are gaining a lot of ground though, especially if you are not writing in a formal context. Maybe en-ca is accepting both variants?
- n_time 5y agothis is correct
- peteretep 5y ago> a weird mixture Nothing weird about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_spelling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_spelling
- thejosh 5y agoen-AU should be pretty same as well, coming from Australia :).
- grecy 5y agoAs an Australian living in Canada for 15 years, I can assure you we barely speak the same language !
- ithkuil 5y agoSpeak != Write
- jee1shi 5y agoI think Australia uses the British spelling for analyse.
- AussieWog93 5y agoAnalyse is the "correct" spelling that we're taught in school, but there has been a gradual shift towards American English due to the dominance that Americans have over the media (e.g. "math" instead of "maths"). Analyse/analyze is one of those words that is in transition, and I suspect we'll be using the American spelling in 50 years' time.
- BelenusMordred 5y agoIn a professional context I've completely abandoned British English. Anything informal I still use it but for writing code and communications it seems more polite especially for people who speak English as a second language. As much as would have liked it to be the reverse think it's fair to say that American English is now completely dominant worldwide and that will only continue.
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- nxpnsv 5y agoThat is brilliant. I am switching to en-CA now.
- laurent92 5y agoAustralian English is excellent too, because they use classy spellings too (I qualify as classy the English I’ve learnt at school in France, please no hard feelings ;) ) and metric system.
- DyslexicAtheist 5y agois there a subset or option for bogans?
- harshbutfair 5y agoAs an Australian I will often use en-GB due to decades of Microsoft trying to force American spelling on us.
- blaser-waffle 5y agoTried that when I lived there. Kept changing things to "sammo" and "arvo", and "beer" to "VB". /s True story: the Aussie courts have ruled that "cunt" isn't a curse / vulgar word; e.g. he's a good- / shit-cunt is not offensive with regards to public officials. https://nswcourts.com.au/articles/court-rules-its-ok-to-refer-to-tony-abbott-as-a-ct/ https://nswcourts.com.au/articles/court-rules-its-ok-to-refe...
- Iv 5y agoFrench here who just defaults to American English on most devices: I never realized that you could have American English with sane unit and date defaults with EN-CA. Will probably use that from now on!
- nindalf 5y agoYou could spawn the trend that leads to the article "Why are there so many Canadians in France?"
- blaser-waffle 5y agoThat's less crazy, esp. given the sizable populations in Canada that speak French to some degree and have ethnic and cultural ties to Francia.
- eloff 5y agoFrancia? Is that a thing or a typo? Never heard that used before.
- jackbravo 5y agoSeems like a historical name for France. And also how we, Spanish speakers, call France :-p https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francia
- green7ea 5y ago> to some degree That kind of hurts ;-)
- 908B64B197 5y ago> that speak French to some degree What do you mean by that?
- _whiteCaps_ 5y agoFrench is a requirement in school for English speaking Canadians... it's not very rigorous though. I've lost most of my French.
- rocknor 5y agoI really hope en-IN moves to American spellings and gets rid of the lakh/crore numbers and use million/billion instead (more scientific). Then it basically becomes en-CA with nice things like ₹.
- msla 5y ago> gets rid of the lakh/crore numbers and use million/billion instead (more scientific). Million/billion is more familiar to non-Indians, but I don't understand how that system's more scientific. Also, from your lack of milliard, I'm guessing you're advocating for the short scale: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales
- chongli 5y agoIt’s more scientific because science has standardized on SI [1] units with metric prefixes [2]. Above 10^9 and below 10^-9 you can see the exponents change by increments of 3. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_System_of_Units https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_System_of_Units [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_prefix https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_prefix
- kylehotchkiss 5y agoA lakh is “1,00,000” not a million.
- as1mov 5y agoHeh good luck with that, it would be as difficult as asking USA to move to metric. :D
- hunter-2 5y agoI do not know much about Canadian conventions to have made such an informed choice. I use en-US simply because I hate to see the red squiggly lines when I am fighting with someone on reddit
- jeltz 5y agoHm, maybe I should start using en-CA as a Sweden then. I am currently using en-US. I have also considered en-DK.
- Symbiote 5y agoI live in Denmark, but with my browser set to English only. (The OS is set to en-IE.) It's not unusual for a website to be presented to me in en-DK — probably due to the language setting and geolocation of my IP address — but it's also fairly common for numbers shown in that locale to be a mess. en-DK specifies a comma decimal separator, which I find confusing when reading English. 1,234.00 being mis-formatted as 1,234,00 isn't ususual. Dates are formatted YYYY-MM-DD, when usage in Denmark is DD-MM-YYYY (as used for da-DK). Supposedly, en-DK is considered "European English", but it fails at that (decimals, currency), and fails at being Danish too (decimals, dates). We need an en-EU, which can easily implement the EU's official style for writing English. Meanwhile, I think en-IE is closest.
- jeffalyanak 5y agoKeep in mind that while some spelling in Canadian English matches the US (analyze in Canadian is spelled with the Z), other words match the British English (color is spelled with a U).
- abrowne 5y agoen-CA uses US paper sizes AFAIK. Which is why I use it, as an American, for the same reasons you state — plus $ as the currency — and without changing paper sizes should I ever print something.
- opan 5y agoen_SE is a nice one if your system has it. Seems to be a sort of made-up locale. Things are in English, but use YYYY-MM-DD date format.
- matkoniecz 5y agoI ended with en-DE that for some reason exists. This way my phone has an English interface rather than poorly translated Polish (or worse, one app had English support but displayed Chinese with Polish as system language). And sane units/date formatting etc. I would mildly prefer en-PL, but it does not exist.
- hoseja 5y agoI wish the language settings were more nuanced. I want sites that are primarily in my mother tongue use that, even if they have english version. I want foreign (often corporate) websites that also have a second-class translation to my native language, to stay in English.
- chmod775 5y agoHTTP headers already let you assign weights and such to languages you understand, but I doubt many sites implement this properly. If the site had its own set of weights corresponding to the quality of its translations, it can multiply those out and arrive at a "best" language to show you.
- canadianfella 5y agoWhy do people say “mother tongue” instead of “native language”?
- s0rce 5y agoCanada uses letter/legal paper sizes at least it did when I last lived there 10 years ago.