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If you are from Europe, even if you're not living in the UK, the en-GB locale will feel a lot more familiar to you than the en-US one. It uses the dd-mm-yyyy d
by prima-facie 3mo ago
If you are from Europe, even if you're not living in the UK, the en-GB locale will feel a lot more familiar to you than the en-US one.
It uses the dd-mm-yyyy date format like the rest of Europe, the start of the week is on Monday (vs Sunday in the US), the default paper size is A4 (vs US letter), measurement defaults are metric (indeed UK roads use imperial, but the default is otherwise metric), the time format uses 24hrs (vs AM/PM in the US).
- delta_p_delta_x 3mo agoNot to mention the fact that English basically everywhere else but the US is essentially en-GB with a few choice changes and anachronisms. Consider en-IN, en-IE, en-SG, en-MY, en-AU, en-NZ, etc.
- chrismorgan 3mo agoI started writing something a while ago with preliminary title “Do en and en-US, not en and en-GB”. If you cluster English dialects by various characteristics, you’ll end up with en-US as a clear outlier. I believe that, if you’re going to divide English into two camps, the best is “English (International)” and “English (US)”. Canadian English is the one that’s closest to US English, but even it works at least as well based on International English as regards spelling (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_and_British_English_spelling_differences https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_and_British_English_s... is an interesting read). But there’s a lot more to it than spelling, and here the distinction is even clearer: the US has its own length, area, volume, weight and temperature units that no one else uses; its own stupid date format that everyone else loathes; its own paper sizes that no one else knows what to do with. Not everyone else agrees on which date format to use, but we do all agree that any of our formats (DD/MM/YY, DD-MM-YYYY, YYYY-MM-DD, &c.) are better than the US’s middle-endian monstrosity. Though if we see the likes of DD/MM/YYYY we may mistrust whether it’s actually MM/DD/YYYY. I also believe that you should default to English (International) for all users geolocated outside the USA. Once you’ve get this divide right, adding further dialects also probably becomes quite a bit easier. But I do wish for diamond inheritance of locales: so you can mix in -ise/-ize, -yse/-yze, -re/-er, -ence/-ense, program/programme, and thereby deduplicate a fair bit across locales. (There are still plenty of differences: such as time formats; decimal/grouping separators though I believe all places where English is a main language use . for decimal and , for grouping; even number grouping varies: en-IN does 1,23,45,678 rather than 12,345,678; keyboard layout; word choices; and lots more.) (One last point: the naming is a bit fiddly. “Spanish (International)” means Spanish as used outside Spain. “English (International)” means the broad international/non-US consensus of what English is, generally following what England does but probably with kilometres instead of miles for long distances.)
- kimos 3mo agoUnfortunately en-CA is not really supported as a locale and we have to choose between en-US and en-GB. I’ll usually choose the latter, because despite more differences in language, there is more alignment between Canada and British English in spelling, units, and style. I really wish en-CA was as well supported as fr-CA honestly.
- 1over137 3mo agoWho would one lobby to have better en-CA support? OS vendors? browser vendors? ISO? Is there some governing body of such things?
- ErroneousBosh 3mo ago> preliminary title “Do en and en-US, You mean "English" and "English (Simplified)"?
- chrismorgan 3mo agoSome of the spellings are simplified, but the rest of it (units and such) is complicationified.
- pezezin 3mo agoMore like it has not been simplified yet.
- zeristor 3mo agoI can’t find en-En…
- jdw64 3mo agoSo in East Asia they basically teach British English. Seeing that made it clear to me.
- lionkor 3mo agoIn Europe (at least DE and NL), we also usually are taught British English in schools.
- TFNA 3mo agoIn a number of European countries now, US English is now taught, and this superseded UK English already a generation ago.
- dofm 3mo agoExcept that if you were brought up in the 50s/60s/70s/80s in the Netherlands, you may have learned to speak English with what sounds to a Brit like an American accent, in part because so many of your EFL teachers were former US soldiers or their spouses who settled. (Exposure to US media is a secondary aspect) This was a very noticeable phase in the UK; I knew several Dutch people who were fully unaware they had American accents and some American linguistic traits until they got here. Whereas Dutch friends of my father who learned English before WWII had actually quite plummy English accents.
- elAhmo 3mo agoSame as in Balkans. We literally used coursebooks from Britain.
- YeGoblynQueenne 3mo agoYes but in Greece what we really learned English from was American movies and comics.
- TimK65 3mo agoSo thankful that we use the correct date format (yyyy-mm-dd) in Sweden.
- WithinReason 3mo agoThat's also the ISO standard since it sorts correctly
- rkangel 3mo agoI believe it's the ISO standard because it is obviously distinguishable from both the MM-DD-YY (US) date order and the DD-MM-YY (UK/EU/Others) date order and so is unambiguous. https://www.iso.org/iso-8601-date-and-time-format.html https://www.iso.org/iso-8601-date-and-time-format.html The fact that they are then sortable is a nice side benefit!
- fmajid 3mo agoI've taken to using the Swedish locale for that very reason (French-American living in the UK).
- My_Name 3mo agoCan I just say that, as someone born and bred in the UK, YYYY-MM-DD is the only correct way to display a date wherever you live. Anything else is as bad as using mm:hh...
- pezezin 3mo agoI prefer en-IE, which is the same plus Euro as the default currency.
- messe 3mo agoAnd kilometers instead of miles.
- MrJohz 3mo agoThe time format in the UK is mostly 12hr, although people are generally aware of 24hr time. In my experience, while there are usually more similarities between the UK and the rest of Europe, Europeans also have more exposure to American English than to British English, so it ends up being a bit of a wash, particularly when it comes to pronunciation, spelling, or idioms.
- Symbiote 3mo agoIn the UK anything "serious" like a train/plane ticket/timetable uses the 24 hour clock. That includes the default way to show a digital clock on a watch, phone or computer.
- MrJohz 3mo agoTimetables yes, but whenever I've bought a digital watch or set up a new device, the default has always been 12-hour. If you ask people the time in the afternoon, they will almost always give you the 12-hour format. People can understand both, but typically default to 12-hour times. This is in stark constrast to Germany, say, where people colloquially use 24-hour times, with some exceptions for round times (e.g. 17:00 might be called "um fünf", but 17:05 would usually be described as "siebzehn uhr fünf", roughly translated as "seventeen oh five". This might have changed in the last five years or so since I was living in the UK, but I've never noticed this be different when I was visiting, nor when speaking to British friends or colleagues.
- carlosjobim 3mo agoNot "serious" per se, but anything which can be subject to misunderstanding.
- hdgvhicv 3mo agoIt’s been years since I saw any am/pm time in written form, while people will say 7:30, they will write 19:30
- roryirvine 3mo ago
- dhosek 3mo agoIn earlier versions of OS X, setting your date format to have the day before the month was sufficient to also alter the default paper size to A4, which was really inconvenient for me since I prefer the day-month ordering (and as a consequence of buying a digital watch in the Netherlands which only had instructions in Dutch which I didn’t understand, I developed the habit of using 24 hour time), but I live in the US and only rarely encounter paper which isn’t 8.5x11.
- sneak 3mo agoDon't you mean paper which isn't 215.9 by 279.4 mm? Go on, switch your thermostat in the US to degrees C. Join us.
- dhosek 3mo agoI’m likely moving to Mexico next year, so I’ve switched the temperature reading on my watch to Celsius in preparation. The problem is that bands of ten degrees in Fahrenheit translate nicely to comfort levels,¹ which is not really true for Celsius, or at least I’m still adapting to get a sense of what those numbers mean in practice. ⸻ 1. For the record: below 0: Stay inside, drink warm cocoa 0–10: Only go out if you have to 10–20: Cold, but doable 20–30: Nice winter-sports temperature 30–40: Cold, but you could run out to the garage without a coat if you had to 40–50: Cold, but you don’t need a scarf or gloves 50–60: Cool. wear a jacket 60–70: Cool, wear a light jacket 70–80: Perfect 80–90: Warm, but not too bad. Go to the pool. 90–100: Ugh, hot. Tell your parents that you’ll pay their electric bill if necessary but they need to turn on the air conditioning. 100+: Stay inside, eat ice cream.
- SpaceNoodled 3mo agoThis scale makes no sense in Fahrenheit or Celsius
- sneak 3mo agoIt's pretty much universally agreed that: a) Fahrenheit is more ergonomic for human perception of temperatures, and b) the 7+ billion who use degrees C every single day don't find this to be a problem.
- penguin_booze 3mo ago> It uses the dd-mm-yyyy date format like the rest of Europe Everywhere sane uses a monotonic order: either increasing or decreasing units. Americans had to be different, somehow - it's a compulsion.
- reaperducer 3mo agoAmericans had to be different, somehow - it's a compulsion. Americans inherited it from the British through colonialism. Later, the British adopted the French method, as through history they periodically go through periods of Francophilia. Look in a good British antiques store or archive and you will see letters penned by Queen Victoria using the "American" date method.
- qweqwe14 3mo agoJust use the C.UTF-8 locale: SI units everywhere ISO date and time American English 24 hour clock etc I think Windows has "English International" locale or something
- prima-facie 3mo ago>> ISO date and time Yes, but not always in my experience: # Default locale is en_GB.utf8 > date Fri 3 Jul 12:14:20 BST 2026 > date +%x 03/07/26 > LC_TIME="C.UTF-8" date Fri Jul 3 12:14:29 BST 2026 > LC_TIME="C.UTF-8" date +%x 07/03/26
- anotherevan 3mo agoAustralian's use mostly the same, except for the time format where AM/PM is still predominant. Also Celsius for temperature and 1,000.0 for number formatting.