[wp-trac] [WordPress Trac] #50183: Default locale should be en, not en-US

[WordPress Trac]

#50183: Default locale should be en, not en-US
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 Reporter:  getsnoopy        |      Owner:  (none)
     Type:  feature request  |     Status:  new
 Priority:  normal           |  Milestone:  Awaiting Review
Component:  I18N             |    Version:  trunk
 Severity:  normal           |   Keywords:
  Focuses:                   |
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 It seems like WordPress currently has a unnamed locale, which is the
 default when no translation packages are installed, but it’s actually used
 as `en-US`. The problem with this is that almost none of the world uses
 any of the conventions used in it. For example, the world uses Oxford
 English on the international stage (the UN, ISO, the IEC, the BIPM, and
 many people) and British English (and its variants) in countries like the
 UK, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, etc. US English is only used in
 the US and some historical colonies / affiliated countries such as
 Liberia, Philippines, and South Korea.

 Furthermore, the regional settings which are used worldwide are almost
 invariably ISO 8601 or DMY for numeric dates (`YYYY-MM-DD` or
 `DD/MM/YYYY`, respectively) and RFC 2822 for full text dates (`DD Month
 YYYY`). Basically no one other than the US uses the MDY date formats
 (`MM/DD/YYYY` and `Month DD, YYYY`).

 Given that WordPress also specifically tags pages with full locales (i.e.,
 with regions; e.g., `en-US`) in the `lang` attribute on the root element,
 it’s clear that this should be changed. I’ve seen countless websites which
 probably were quickly set up without thinking about the locale, so they’re
 tagged with `en-US` when all of their content is in `en-GB` or some of the
 other more international variants.

 My proposal is to copy all the strings from the code base (which are
 presumed to be in the `en-US` locale) to an actual `en-US` translation
 file, and change all the default text / formats to international ones such
 as Oxford English, ISO 8601, and RFC 2822 under the locale `en`, which
 would be labelled '''English (International)''' or simply '''English'''.

 I've floated this idea in the #polyglots Slack channel, and many agree
 that it should be done, so I want to propose it formally.

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Ticket URL: <https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/50183>
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