Regional Settings - Languages

[shag00]

I am attempting to change the language on my system from en-US to en-AU, not so much for the system itself but because it appears that whatever is the system default is used by other applications as it's default. In preparation for this I downloaded the Hunspell en-AU dictionary. So I navigated to K>System Settings>Regional Settings where I have 4 options, Language, Formats, Spell Check, Date & Time. Of these I was able to set my desired choice in 3 of them but in the Language screen I do not have the en-AU option available to choose (but it is available in the Formats and Spell Check screens).

On entering the Language screen there is an information message on the top line saying, There are currently no preferred languages configured. There is an Add languages click box in the bottom right hand corner which opens a pop-up screen where you can select from a bunch of languages but Australian English is not listed. locale -a returns a hit for en-AU.utf8. My date and time is also set to Perth, Australia +8. Spell Check is set to Australian English.

It seems these different screens pull their information from different sources, does anyone know how to add Australian English as the preferred language in the Language screen?

And for those wondering, previous installation experience has taught me to just accept US English as the default language as deviations seem to cause problems.

[jlittle]

You don't mention "British English", which I see, and I'd have thought is a better fit for Australian English.

Note that, IIUC, this language choice affects only UI legends and messages. These have to be manually translated, or at least checked, for each message.

...because it appears that whatever is the system default is used by other applications as it's default...

Are you sure? In principle, that choice only affects KDE plasma apps. I see also that my /usr/share/locale-langpack directory has en_AU directory, with messages for lots of non-plasma apps.

I've found it easy to screw up the locale set up. I've provoked various nonsense; I was baffled by messages in magyar nyelv (Hungarian). What does locale in a konsole say?

[shag00]

I agree that British English is far more palatable than US English and the reason I did not mention it the same reason I did not mention Russian, that being that neither are the language I am after. Additionally, I don't understand why Australian was available in the other region related screens and not the language screen but is available as a separate dictionary by Hunspell.

"...because it appears that whatever is the system default is used by other applications as it's default..." was a bit of a fishing expedition, I really don't know.

scott@scottubuntu: $ locale
LANG=en_AU.UTF-8
LANGUAGE=en_HK:en
LC_CTYPE="en_AU.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC="en_AU.UTF-8"
LC_TIME="en_AU.UTF-8"
LC_COLLATE="en_AU.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY="en_AU.UTF-8"
LC_MESSAGES="en_AU.UTF-8"
LC_PAPER="en_AU.UTF-8"
LC_NAME="en_AU.UTF-8"
LC_ADDRESS="en_AU.UTF-8"
LC_TELEPHONE="en_AU.UTF-8"
LC_MEASUREMENT="en_AU.UTF-8"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="en_AU.UTF-8"
LC_ALL=

This seems a bit of a fish out of water: LANGUAGE=en_HK:en

My attempts to change this have obviously been unsuccessful. It did but no longer appears in my regional settings. I suspect it may have something to do with my original question, does anyone know how to add Australian English as the preferred language in the Language screen?

[Don B. Cilly]

Sorry, but I am curious.
As far as written language is concerned, the difference between British and Australian English is... you can have "sheila" without a capital S?
Or would your computer automagically convert Englishman to Pommie?


No, really. What are they?

[shag00]

Although not a vast list, there are no wankers in the UK lol.

[shag00]

"I'm afraid this is kind of sort of like vaguely bugging me, so I'll insist until I'm told to shut up :·)"

Who wrote this famous line?

[Don B. Cilly]

Nah, and they don't play three-card-brag either

The famous line was obviously ;·) Douglas Adams though

[TWPonKubuntu]

Ok, I'm losing brain cells rapidly now... Please stop while I have enough left to make morning coffee.

[Don B. Cilly]

Boohoo. We haven't even got to Hong Kong English yet...

[jlittle]

Another thought, while looking in muon I noticed there are language packs for GNOME that are not installed; if it's GNOME applications you are interested in, maybe they're be falling back to US English.

The general flakiness has manifested; British English is still at the top of the list, and all I did was add American English on the end. Now command line programmes are using using French. F.ex.

$ apt list --upgradeable
En train de lister... Fait

locale says LANGUAGE=en_GB:fr:en_US, so I guess they don't know what en_GB is, so fall back to fr. No, not so simple. With LANGUAGE=en_US:fr I still get French. I have to remove "fr" from $LANGUAGE to stop the use of French. If I try to remove French. I get

Désolé, Ubuntu 19.10 a rencontré une erreur interne.
En cas de nouveaux problèmes, essayez de redémarrer votre ordinateur.

<rant>
The whole internalization thing in KDE has been screwy for many years, because it's not done properly in Qt 4 and 5. There's a whole of lot of ICU (International Components for Unicode) support set up in Linux, but Qt uses its own hard-coded, old, version of it, and this is deeply frustrating to many, many KDE users, because it's really hard to do dates properly while always avoiding US date braindamage^* (I set my Time formats to en_DK, Danish English? WTF?) because Qt thinks everyone in a locale should use the same settings, and everyone must use only the locales they hard code. I don't know why, it's not like the ICU stuff is rocket science, and boost.locale works well I'm told.

^* In that word's traditional Unix meaning, please US people don't take "offense".
</rant>

[shag00]

It's interesting to note that people would go to such lengths as hardcoding languages that don't exist. I suppose that if you were writing software in the 1500s it may have been understandable to tie tie someone's physical location to the language they spoke as literacy and air travel then were not as good as they are today. It's not just KDE, language selection in Google is still a huge PITA. Maybe it would be better if, rather than telling me how everything is smart and automatic, you just let me choose what language I prefer and always use it.

[Don B. Cilly]

I have:

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

And language, date formats, and all are just as I want them and make perfect sense.

[shag00]

And what is the difference in these 2 settings?
LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
LANGUAGE=en_US

[Don B. Cilly]

I guess the second one is the installation language. I didn't see - didn't really look, you know how finicky the installer is, the less you touch... ;·) - an option for British English.

I mean, in System Settings, it says "Colors". It's not as if I give a fig though, is it, so I never bothered to see if I could change it.

Now, in HK English, is root called tai-pan, and a digital signature called a chop?

[shag00]

You have lived in HK?