Language mixup

[joneall]

I have installed Quantal with 2 languages, American English and French, with that order of preference in System Settings > Locale.

My country is set to the UK (so that I can get dates in the order DD/MM/YY). Originally, it was set to France and changing it to UK does not seem to change anything.

$ echo $LANG
en_US.UTF-8

BUT

$ env | grep -i fr
LC_PAPER=fr_FR.UTF-8
LC_ADDRESS=fr_FR.UTF-8
LC_MONETARY=fr_FR.UTF-8
LC_NUMERIC=fr_FR.UTF-8
LC_TELEPHONE=fr_FR.UTF-8
XDG_SESSION_PATH=/org/freedesktop/DisplayManager/Session1
XDG_SEAT_PATH=/org/freedesktop/DisplayManager/Seat0
LC_IDENTIFICATION=fr_FR.UTF-8
LC_MEASUREMENT=fr_FR.UTF-8
LANGUAGE=en_US:fr:en
LC_TIME=fr_FR.UTF-8
LC_NAME=fr_FR.UTF-8

and if I look at a date, it's in French.

$ ls -l xxx
-rw-rw-r-- 1 jon jon 0 juil. 19 19:17 xxx

Worse yet, system error messages are in French! (Quel horreur!)

$ ls -zyw
ls*: option invalide -- 'z'
Saisissez «*ls --help*» pour plus d'informations.

What am I doing wrong? I thought there was a default setting for LANG somewhere in /etc/something-or-other but I can not find it.

Until Quantal, which was a fresh installation, not an update, I had no language problems.

[Rog132]

Recent language topics from the Kubuntu forums:

- http://www.kubuntuforums.net/showthr...ndar-and-menus
- http://www.kubuntuforums.net/showthr...ng-used-in-KDE
- http://www.kubuntuforums.net/showthr...ot-Locale-quot

[joneall]

I had seen those entries, but my problem was not with KDE and the others two seemed to involve things I was not concerned by. Don't even know what Redbook is. But I read further this time and discovered the locale command, which I had never heard of -- only env.

Looking into /etc/default/locale, I saw (with horror)
jon@jon-desktop:/etc/default$
$ cat locale
LANG="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC="fr_FR.UTF-8"
LC_TIME="fr_FR.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY="fr_FR.UTF-8"
LC_PAPER="fr_FR.UTF-8"
LC_NAME="fr_FR.UTF-8"
LC_ADDRESS="fr_FR.UTF-8"
LC_TELEPHONE="fr_FR.UTF-8"
LC_MEASUREMENT="fr_FR.UTF-8"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="fr_FR.UTF-8"

No idea where all the fr_FR stuff came from. So I deleted all but the first line, after saving a copy, rebooted and all is in english now.

So thanks a lot!

[joneall]

Nope, didn't work. I still have what looks like a good locale:

$ locale
LANG=en_US.UTF-8
LANGUAGE=en_US:en:fr
LC_CTYPE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_TIME="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_COLLATE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MESSAGES="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_PAPER="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_NAME="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_ADDRESS="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_TELEPHONE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MEASUREMENT="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_ALL=


and

$ env | grep _fr

returns nothing. I have put

export LANGUAGE="en_US:en:fr"

into my .bashrc. But the bloody system still speaks french to me:

$ apt-get install aldkjf
E: Impossible d'ouvrir le fichier verrou /var/lib/dpkg/lock - open (13: Permission non accordée)
E: Impossible de verrouiller le répertoire d'administration (/var/lib/dpkg/). Avez-vous les privilèges du superutilisateur*?

[Snowhog]

Have you logged out / back in yet?

[joneall]

Have you logged out / back in yet?

Yup. It's odd, because the dates in 'ls -l' are in english, but the messaes are in french. Why the mixture?

[joneall]

Omygosh! I just fired up Gimp and its titles (File, Edit...) are in french. Awful! Help, please.