Re: A language by any other name

[Ben Bell <bjb@deus.net>]

On Thu, Sep 27, 2001 at 07:44:05AM +0200, David N. Welton wrote:
> 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.
Sure. You speak English. So do I, but I speak British English, usually.
But I still occasionally get caught out when installing stuff and I select
"English" and get "American English". Call them "English" if they're
interchangeable. Call them "American English" and "British English" when
they're not -- as in keyboards, dictionaries etc. No reason for either
to be abbreviated if they're both present.

But either way, the most infuriating thing is not remembering that you
don't use and English keyboard in England, you use an English keyboard in
the US and a UK keyboard in England ;), it's that it's inconsistent.
I need to look through an app for British, Great British, UK, GB,
English(UK) and probably a few other things before finally deciding, "yup,
I'm just plain English to this app".

In fact, I might even get around to submitting bugs against apps that
don't use my ISO approved country name soon, if I can just remember
which one it is ;)

Ben


-- 
+-----Ben Bell - "A song, a perl script and the occasional silly sig.-----+
  ///      email: bjb@deus.net            www: http://www.deus.net/~bjb/
  bjb    Don't try to drive me crazy... 
  \_/                                        ...I'm close enough to walk.