[wp-trac] [WordPress Trac] #48152: en as default language instead of en_us

[WordPress Trac]

#48152: en as default language instead of en_us
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 Reporter:  colomet      |       Owner:  (none)
     Type:  enhancement  |      Status:  new
 Priority:  normal       |   Milestone:  Awaiting Review
Component:  I18N         |     Version:
 Severity:  normal       |  Resolution:
 Keywords:  close        |     Focuses:
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Comment (by getsnoopy):

 Replying to [comment:4 knutsp]:
 > "en" could mean International
 English[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_English] and be a
 separate language. 99.9% of strings would probably be copied from "en_US"
 Or from the other flavours of English that is defined.
 >
 > What would be the gain if the language code was "en" instead of "en_US"?
 >
 > There is no localization coupled to "en_US". "US" indicates the flavour
 of the language, not he localization. It's just an internal identifier.
 It's only visible when admin is choosing a language, and could even
 removed from the dropdown.
 >
 > Anyway, this not a core thing, but for the polyglots team on Make
 WordPress[https://make.wordpress.org/polyglots/]. Asking for a new
 language to be created is straight forward and happens regularly when
 someone who knows an unsupported language comes forward and are willing to
 do or manage the translation (AFIK).

 Following up from #50183, the idea is to change the default to `en`, not
 `en-US`. This would mean copying the default strings over into an `en-US`
 locale (that can be explicitly chosen in the Settings menu), and changing
 the default strings to international English (Oxford English), ISO 8601
 (numeric date format), and RFC 2822 (full-text date format). The `en-US`
 locale doesn't make sense in almost every way as the default, as there are
 many people who just quickly set up a site without much regard (or
 knowledge) of other locales.

 The gain would be that the `lang` attribute, for example, among other
 things would not be incorrectly tagged for websites which are not in that
 locale. There is localization that happens when `en-US` is used, such as
 the date formats for example.

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Ticket URL: <https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/48152#comment:7>
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