So thankful that we use the correct date format (yyyy-mm-dd) in Sweden.

Not 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.

So in East Asia they basically teach British English. Seeing that made it clear to me.

In 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.

The 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.

I prefer en-IE, which is the same plus Euro as the default currency.

Certain cultures teach that diversity is a bad thing to be feared and extinguished. Diversity is only a good thing when your mind has been poisoned by "education" and "experience".

It requires an open mind to see diverse experiences as a good thing, and certain cultures think having citizens with open minds is an unprofitable way to run a society.

Right. As a Brit I am entitled to think we speak the best version (because we do; ISE is a close second) but I am not entitled to believe everyone else's is wrong, because that is ahistorical. They have diverged repeatedly and thus ours is one of the divergences.

Much of British English was standardised long after several waves of the US settlers left our shores, so US english has some traits of pre-standardised English dialects, and ours is different again.

It's equally silly when some Americans claim their English is closer to the "true" English as a result, because, again, there was really no standardised "true" English when they left.

Along with some simplifications and some things reintroduced from german settlers, it has some traits of older English that the British abandoned in our own simplification of the language.

Is ours the best? Of course it bloody is :-) But is it "true" English? No more than anyone else's. That is the enormous power of English.

I agree in general, but there's one exception: use of the word 'tabled'. This means roughly the opposite in British and US English, and there's often insufficient surrounding context to alert the reader to their error.

(OTOH I don't think you should suppress 'false friends' like biscuits, pants etc.)

I have a cunning plan: Sneak as many Brits into Hollywood as possible, and have them slip in as many British references into American films as they can. Over time, they'll effectively BECOME British, and Robert's your father's brother!

Just whatever you do, don't mention the taxes! I did once, but I think I got away with it...

I live in Sweden (and have for 11 years), a lot of the "charm" in my speech has been filed away, I speak in a very neutral accent (which barely registers as british anymore) and I use americanisms a lot, avoiding "false friends".

(IE; I never use the word "chip" to mean crisps or fries - I will instead use "Crisps", despite it being british, and fries, despite it being American; in order to avoid ambiguity.)

The more difficult one is "pants", I would say underwear or trousers.

It's interesting how I only notice how much it's contrasted when I go back to the UK and hear others, I notice people using words that I've put a mental "X" on, and its only then that I realise that I've put the mental "X" on the word... because it no longer feels natural to hear it.

I worked in a US office for a while (but with a few other British people as well). I didn't feel the need to edit my sense of humour luckily, but I purposefully switched to saying things like "sidewalk", "elevator" and "bathroom" because it made interactions a lot easier.

I am the only Brit in the department I work in. No one gets the cultural references or British idioms I use…

Oh, fer feck’s s sake, it’s not like the U.S. hasn’t had Monty Python for fifty years. Me, after a steady diet of British motorcycle magazine’s for the last 40 years, I speak Brit just fine. But I would think the diversity and prevalence of online forums would get folks up to speed. I dunno, maybe people just don’t pay that much attention.

OTOH, I do recall an Australia coworker who expressed appreciation that he didn’t have to explain idioms to me (Oz has moto mags, too). Obviously it’s a real problem even in this age of connections.

I have a similar experience, for the last 5+ years I've worked in companies where very few of the people I work with are British which does require care on both language and idiom. Combined with being older than a lot of colleagues, cultural references need to be picked with care :D

I had that when workign with a lot of other Europeans. When I moved to a company where everyone was British I had to re-adapt, particularly because I'd become more direct after working with a lot of Germans.

When I moved to the states nearly 20 years ago, my pronunciation sharpened up (stopped dropping consonants) very quickly. Over time I stopped using idioms, and the few bits of Cockney Rhyming slang I used (Butchers, Scooby; which are look, and clue, respectively).

I think it was less as a conscious act and more as a result of just not being around people that use them. There's a sizeable element of cultural reinforcement involved.

That said, they'll pry my British spelling out of my cold, dead, hands.

I wish you worked with me, in that case.

I've had the pleasure of working with many different people from different backgrounds, including many Brits. I've always found the dry, understated humor from them to be endearing, making casual conversation more interesting. My parents are both from the Middle East, my wife is from Southeast Asia, and I have many Middle Eastern, Desi, African American as well as African (as in continental) friends, so I may not be a "typical" American in that regard.

That being said, don't underestimate the value you bring by sharing your cultural insights. I don't think I told anyone to their face that appreciated their cultural value, but I hoped that my engagement and cheerfulness in dealing with them at least communicated that I was happy with their presence.

It might be that your engagement with someone opens them up to a part of the world they've yet to experience or know much about. Granted, there are lots of places with more gaps than the US and the UK, but there's still value in that and I started with those examples but mentioned it comes from all sides.

Are your other department members (a) native English speakers, but not British, or (b) non-native English speakers? In my experience, there is a huge difference. I am a native English speaker. When speaking with (a) but from a different region, you can usually speak in your normal style, but don't use too much slang. With (b), I remove any slang and choose my words much more carefully. My goal is to communicate well, even if I need to adapt my style.

I'm often shuffled into teams where I am the only American and everyone else is Indian, working in India, and I take a small measure of pride in switching to the formal register that Indians like to use in workplace English, and using the idioms they have.

There's a big difference between live discussion and blog. A blog reader can search what something means, live listeners cannot.

+1 very similar situation, one of only two Brits the rest from all.over who speak "international English"

Despite all the woke stuff I still have to hide my en-GB background in my BigCo

> "Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller."

Think of it as learning a second language. It should be a lot easier for you than most people.

Well, then... G'day, mate! Let's put another shrimp on the barbie!

It’s always the ones shouting loudest about inclusivity

I really want to see a local Euro English[0] develop as an actual, recognized variant of English. Both because it would be really funny, but also as a way for Continental Europe to develop a common language we can shape our own way

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euro_English (we don't have to take the examples in this page as-is, we can definitely make better local oddities!)

If you want to read some hilarious reactions of Americans panicking when they are suddenly exposed to non-American English/British accents, check out these threads:

https://www.reddit.com/r/PawPatrol/comments/1q68v16/british_...

https://www.reddit.com/r/PawPatrol/comments/17wcsdm/my_digit...

Sometimes Americans wonder why English characters start talking about a basic cable channel when they really should be seeking medical help.

Does en-GB-Brummie cover the whole of the Black Country?

I have sometimes pondered if we could expand the language codes with ISO 3166-2.

Would en-GB-WLL be a valid variant of English?

You seem to be unaware of one of the British idioms used in language, it's called "A joke".

Calling her 'the wicked with of the terfs' was one of those. I found it quite funny personally. I can find the joke funny despite my opinion of Rowling as a person or her statements on particular topics. Sometimes, here in the UK, we make jokes featuring people because the joke is funny, not just to virtue signal.

Here in the UK, there is a significant section of the population whose base state is mildly dissatisfied and the external manifestation of that is low level grumbling about minor things. It's not a virtue signal, it's not a statement, it is just how they are. You may do better understanding if you take off your glasses of American Exceptionalism and view things more objectively.

Ironically, your post could very easily be read that you were upset by the article, wanted to express that to strangers, and signalled your social ingroup by referencing other things you were upset about, like the joke.

This post contains more than one joke also. Some people will get them, some will not. And that's OK.

It's funny, and perhaps not entirely unwarranted, that "racism" pops up here?

As a Black American, I find the author's idea extremely interesting and naturally began to wonder -- what might this idea (in code?) look like for us?

Owing to history and whatnot, the role "Black American English" might play is of course very much a moving target, but it's interesting to think about.

Nobody said it was.

I always put my locale in Ireland: I want

  - "proper English"
  - metric system
  - Euro

not ‘whilst’? ;)

English (traditional) and English (simplified)

Do the needful!

given English evolved from Norman French, it's maybe just a local variation than a true invention? fr-GB feels more correct :)

That may be true, but in practice, US english has no taken over as the de-facto English. All thanks to the Internet.

I am glad someone is pushing back on this, though, and I want more multi lingual sites on the Internet in general.

The amount of times that darn keyboard selector appears for no reason in Windows because its once again added en-US as a language, which it then switches to randomly for seemingly no reason and all of a sudden my symbols are all in the wrong places. One day someone at Microsoft is going to look at that bug and fix it....

As someone that changes the default as well, yep a pain.

I discovered just this week that the numbering of weeks within the year is different between US and Europe, thus, cal -w can show different numbers for some years depending on the locale. Outlook can probably also show different things depending on the system settings.

Europe uses the algo according to the ISO 8601 standard, where the week no.1 is the one with January 1st occuring between Monday and Thursday, inclusive. If the 1st happens on Friday or later within a week, it's considered a week no.52 or 53 of the previous year.

US does not use this scheme and [EDITED] I am not sure what method is applied there.

Some companies use week numbers in business talks, planning and scheduling, so be aware who is speaking about which weeks!

Nobody's ever been able to explain to me what those concepts are, so I don't believe it.

This was my starting point, a belief that other languages were 'better' at expressing different things. However, I have done a few projects requiring translation over the years and I have found European language speakers, notably Italian and German, preferring the freedom of English to the relative straightjackets of their respective mother tongues.

As a Brit I am biased, however, there is a crucial difference between 'free range' British English and 'simplified' American English. Superficially, American English seems the more 'free', with liberties taken to create cool words and brand names. However, American English is constrained by the work of Webster, with there being a definitive dictionary, very much cast in stone, with changes such as 'no u in colour' made purely because of a rejection of everything English, including tea and spellings.

Currently we have something more extreme going on with the language that Ukrainians are expected to speak, with their 'government' seeking new and improved ways to move the language away from Russian. If this was OG English then it would be like getting rid of every French sounding word, so 'beef' becomes 'cow meat', 'mutton' becomes 'sheep meat' and so on. These changes can be made quite easily since it is not a whole new language has to be learned (or unlearned) at once. The lists of banned/allowed words changes all the time, much like Newspeak in 1984.

This won't be the last attempt to determine what a language is by decree, however, the result of such efforts is that languages get stuck in time. Hence the observations of my translation 'helpers', preferring English to their mother tongues.

IMHO American English is British English, stuck in time for 250 years, or whenever Webster got his special dictionary to schools. Meanwhile, OG British English has evolved in its own way, a form of direct democracy, where words change based on how they are used in the here and now.

I don't believe there is such a thing as an actual English word, all of it is 'stolen' from various colonial adventures of the past, or inherited from invaders of the past, notably the 'old enemy', as in the French.

French used to be the language for arts, diplomacy and the aristocracy. But they lost out, in part due to the fixed dictionary. Had they allowed their language to accept English loan words, chances are that French could still be the language it once was.

Currently there is an existential threat to English as the language for science and technology due to the rise of China. It gets worrying when data sheets for Texas Instruments components are released first in Chinese, to be followed up, months later with English translations. Therefore I am rooting for en-GB rather than en-US, due to that minor detail of there not being a 'Webster' dictionary of the past, casting a shadow on our future.

What's the "quite" difference?

Regarding spelling: As an unbiased foreigner, many American variants seem superior to me (color, defense, program, meter) with british just being weird (and/or tainted by the french).

Regarding Rowling: It seems to me that she gets more pushback/hate being, say "50% modern left-ish" than people that are even less aligned with left values. This gives me kinda medieval religion vibes (better an unbeliever/outsider than an apostate). I think such a valuation system is inherently flawed. Curious about your view on this.

Sidenote: If you're referring to the zombie-ant fungus, those go by Ophiocordyceps nowadays (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ophiocordyceps_unilateralis).

Should probably have told the writers of Wicked to not associate Elphaba with a (children's book level) evil witch. I think the Wicked Witch of the West is pretty appropriate for JK

> It seems more academic if that makes sense

I remember a naive cultural bias in the US towards regarding the English as possessing an elevated degree of education and refinement. I would have assumed the greater presence of truly idiotic British figures in American news media and comedy in recent decades might have clubbed that misconception to death like a baby seal.

"The idiot who praises, with enthusiastic tone, All centuries but this, and every country but his own."

The funny thing is for younger British people this tends to be highly asymmetric - we can (sort of!) understand Scouse or Glaswegian due to growing up here, but also almost everyone under the age of 50 grew up on a steady diet of American TV shows, hip hop etc.

I can understand The Wire fine without subtitles because most of the actors just speak relatively generic African American English instead of a proper Baltimore dialect, and that's no problem at all for someone who spent their formative years consuming Nas and Biggie and all the rest of it.

On the other hand Snoop who is the only main character with an actual Baltimore street accent is pretty much unintelligible to me, but I suspect she would be for a lot of middle class americans as well

Do you hear yourself now? "Life is too short to read texts which reference a culture you're unfamiliar with"? Seriously?

> American voices always sound like parodies or the Walmart greeter.

Timer set for “thirdy minnids”. Unfortunately the others also sound like parodies in their own way — the Californian's idea of en_GB, “Oi, you go' a loicense for that thir'y minute timah?”

When I still used siri I had it be a british woman solely because it made me feel like I was in a James Bond movie

TBF, some Australian accents put a rising intonation at the end of sentences, as though the speaker is always asking their interlocutor for approval. Just another thing that's reminiscent of Clive James' remark that too many Australians are descended from prison officers.

Remember the scene in Hot Fuzz where the accents are so thick they need 3 layers of translation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hs-rgvkRfwc

Bill Bryson The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way was written by a journalist with no actual training in the subject matter, and there is a factual error or urban myth on virtually every single page of the book. In fact, among shoddy pop-sci books, this one is particularly notorious. You might want to read about this and see why this is a book that deserves to be forgotten.

You might be interested to know that the BBC has a Pidgin version.

> BBC News Pidgin now dey on Whatsapp

> No dull yoursef, be di first to get latest tori, analysis, exclusive interviews and ogbonge coverage of Nigerian and International news from BBC News Pidgin, straight to your Whatsapp.

> Click here to join di channel

— https://www.bbc.com/pidgin

Glad that you got the colour scheme changes

I'm very disappointed it didn't translate the $1m story to £747,000

I found it completely unrelatable and couldn't follow it at all, not having any frame of reference for how much a dollar might be worth in real money

Luckily the background reminded me i could go and make myself a cup of tea to feel better

> link aggregators

This is definitely manageable: canonical meta tags and other metadata; update the URL to a canonical permalink that encodes the language preference; a banner that informs people that there is an alternate version, etc.

As a non-brit I feel discriminated against by being unable to see that amazing page.

Not many Cockneys in London these days, they're all in Essex

For people who don't get the reference, it's a classic advert for the milk marketing board. It's quite topical at the moment given the Fifa world cup

https://youtu.be/zPFrTBppRfw?si=BaHHYnP52UfWd6Fs

Ian Rush (referenced in the ad) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Rush

Exactly.

Exactly

Brit here. I spent decades hearing about twinkies from US TV so I had to finally try one.

It was the blandest, most solid chunk of cake with a flavourless blob of sugar in the middle.

Blog, from web log, from log (written), from log (wood), from Middle English logge. No French involved, which is where the `ou` phoneme is from.

> bloug

* blogue

I’ve seen a lot of blog entries using typography so horrible, I had to use reader view to read the page—there was a trend in the mid-2010s to use pencil-thin fonts and there is now and then still a blog out there using one of those unreadable pencil-thin fonts.

However, this blog uses a very readable font called “Atkinson Hyperlegible” and I had no problem reading it. If the color scheme bothers you, click on “eInk” in the theme switcher on the top.

Disclaimers: No relationship to the owner of this blog. No AI used in this posting; I have the em-dash (—) in my custom keyboard layout.

The fact you think he's afraid may be a signal that you also aren't a Brit.

It's not really comparable, almost every native English speaker can understand most British English fine, it's only when people use excessive slang or regional accents that people have issues (and that's an issue with any language - it can easily be an issue among native speakers within the UK!).

It doesn't really matter if you natively speak British English instead of American English, whereas French and English are obviously completely different languages and the switch made French a lot less useful and English a lot more useful

Lingua Franca, an Italian phrase, referred to a form of Spanish.

Or more generally: either everyone uses it or it stays the same.

Nobody speaks the One True English. That is its power.

If I (a Brit) moves to the US, I'd absolutely get a Yorkshire-branded tea caddy filled with teabags on my desk. Sometimes you need to live up to the stereotypes.

I suspect it was England and Wales only.

It was never shown in NI, which had its own Milk Marketing Board. Scotland had a separate one too, so probably didn't get them either.

There's a rather large and easily understood difference between wanting to preserve your Britishness in the face of the Americans, and joining Lennon-Yaxleys band of gammon faced flag shaggers (though flying the flag is less of a signal while the footies on).

You fear for his safety!?

> From the outside

You should try visiting the inside.

More generally, we Brits draw a measure of distinction between cultural pride and nationalism: the former is good, and we have plenty of it; the latter is viewed with suspicion, for good reason.

(Edited for clarity)

> From the outside, this does not appear to be a safe time to express nationalism or cultural pride in the UK.

From outside this dimension maybe.

OP here.

Fuck off.

Yours etc,