[Mageia-discuss] What is your motivation? (about American English in Mageia for British users)

[Max Quarterpleen]

On Thu, Jul 26, 2012 at 5:45 AM, TJ <andrewsfarm at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 07/25/2012 02:52 PM, Anne Wilson wrote:
>
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>> On 25/07/12 13:59, Max Quarterpleen wrote:
>>
>>> I am so glad that Anne said that, because she is one of the few
>>> people qualified to say what I, and probably several others, were
>>> thinking. I grew up learning en_US, but due to one thing or another
>>> was exposed to mainly en_GB in high school. Since I have an open
>>> mind to these things, I taught myself en_GB spelling, grammar
>>> (which is slightly different when spoken) and idioms. Of course I
>>> am most comfortable in en_US, but that's not the point. The point
>>> is the mindset.
>>>
>>
>> Long ago I read that US spelling is, in fact, much closer to 18C.
>> British English spelling, and that the spelling we now feel to be
>> correct is in fact something that has developed over the recent
>> centuries.  That interested me.
>>
>> What really clinched things for me, though, was the concept that
>> writing is about communication.  The one thing that matters above all,
>> is whether the reader understands you.  Because of this, I sometimes
>> correct grammar, where I think a sentence as it stands leads to some
>> ambiguity.  Beyond that, as long as the meaning is clear and the
>> sentence not particularly clumsy, I leave well alone.
>>
>> Wobo said that his English teacher told him that few people in Britain
>> speak "official" English.  How true that is.  I would be very
>> surprised to find anyone that didn't have some variations, often
>> showing centuries of ancestral culture.  It's not accident that in
>> Yorkshire there are few French influences and many Norse ones.  French
>> barons in the 11C settled much further south than this, whereas many
>> Scandinavians settled here.  We have beautiful words like "thoil"
>> which no-one else understands, but for us it expresses something that
>> has no equivalent in "official" English.  You can't thoil it if you
>> can afford to buy something, but you don't feel it would add
>> sufficient value to your life.  How about all that in one word?
>>
>>  Might just as well add my two cents, as we say here on our side of the
> Pond. But for those who are sensitive to such things, please feel free to
> convert that to the currency of your choice.
>
> I'm a native upstate New Yorker, something very different from those from
> that downstate city that bears the same name as our state. Native in the
> sense that I was born here, not that I'm a "Native-American." (Something
> many of us think is one of our problems - far too many hyphenated
> Americans.) I am a farmer by trade.
>
> The US is a strange place that often makes little sense. We drive on the
> parkway, and park on the driveway, and we are arrogant enough to call
> ourselves "Americans," as if the US was the only country on the two
> continents. (Yes, I'm as guilty of that as the next guy. All part of the
> culture.) We have several dialects, each with its own spellings of certain
> words, and sometimes those from one part of the country have a hard time
> understanding those from another. And add to that all the words we've
> integrated from languages from all over the world - our infamous
> "melting-pot" at work - and you get a hopeless mess. But it's our mess, and
> we like it that way.
>
> BTW Anne, sorry, but to my ears "thoil" sounds like something someone with
> a lisp would say when describing a planting medium.
>
>
>  T
>>
>>> As they say in NY, put out or get out. The British translation for
>>> that would be: get down from your high horse and help out or just
>>> go away.
>>>
>>
>> OR "Put up, or shut up" :-)
>>
>>  I don't remember hearing Max's version in Upstate New York. The high
> horse variation is older usage (My grandmother favored it. Oops. Sorry.
> *favoured* it.), and Anne's version is the most common here. Another
> version is "Put your money where your mouth is."


When I say NY, there is of course only one thing I mean, The City. :P
And I haven't lived there for more than 20 years, so my slang might be a
bit dated.


>
>
>  So please, you are welcome to join the Mageia team and provide an
>>> en_GB translation for what is missing. You are welcome to sit in
>>> silent defiance and nurse your stubbornness. But this, this
>>> angst-driven tirade? This is not welcome at all. It only generates
>>> more angst.
>>>
>>
>> After a bad start, just relax.  You will be welcomed if you do give
>> your effort.
>>
>> Anne
>>
>>  Lord knows I can't speak for all Americans, but for my own part I could
> easily adapt if British were the default language, rather than American. I
> have traveled to Canada and have cruised through web sites that used
> British spelling, and have felt no offense (Oops again. *offence,* isn't
> it?) at seeing it. If it will help international relations, I'm more than
> willing to exist with spellings that look odd to me. After a while, I doubt
> they'd still look so odd.
>

That isn't even on the table for discussion. We simply cannot change the
hard-coded default language in the code. We need our original programmer to
do that, and chances are that even he won't be able to.
The discussion is about having an en_GB "translation". Basically just a .po
file that will swap out certain strings for other strings. It hasn't
happened until now because of lack of manpower. But now it looks like an
en_GB i18n team is getting off the ground. So we'll probably see it
implemented by Mga3. Although due to the emotions involved, there may be a
backport for it for Mga2.
Please note: I am not on any i18n, packaging, devel or QA team. Therefore
any speculations I make about when something will be available are purely
that: speculations.


>
> Heck, you can use Cockney if you want. Sounds like fun.
>
> TJ
>
>
>
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