[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:  reopened
 Priority:  normal       |   Milestone:
Component:  I18N         |     Version:
 Severity:  normal       |  Resolution:
 Keywords:  close        |     Focuses:
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Changes (by getsnoopy):

 * status:  closed => reopened
 * resolution:  wontfix =>


Comment:

 @JeffPaul I think you misunderstood the premise of the ticket. The premise
 is not that if someone wants "any generic English", they could choose any
 one of the variants listed. It is more of a 2-pronged one:

 1. That the default variant (`en-US`) is an incorrect one for the majority
 of the world. As mentioned above and in the duplicate linked ticket as
 well, US English speakers only make up 4–5% of the world and 26–28% of the
 world's English-speaking population. For the rest, it would either be `en-
 GB` or `en` (being used here not as "generic English", but as
 "international English" or "Oxford English"). Having what is essentially
 an incorrect locale be the default for the majority of the world is a
 usability issue, and this one really is ''**huge**'' (and keeps growing
 with time).\\\\I can personally attest to having guided people to fix
 and/or personally having fixed over 600 (and counting) WordPress
 installations to change their locale, date format, and time format to
 other ones. Multiplied over the number of WP developers there are, the
 number is staggering. Ironically, there are multiple websites on
 wordpress.org's home page gallery that have this issue (where the website
 is owned by someone outside the US and/or the content is written in non-US
 English, but the locale is set to `en-US`).\\\\The problem with this is
 that it's pernicious. Of course, having Afrikaans, for example, be the
 default language would a clear indication that something is wrong (to most
 English speakers), so users would try to fix it as soon as possible,
 overlooking the fact of it being annoying to have to do for every
 installation (which is bad design per se). Here, however, many don't even
 realize that what they're getting is the US variant of English because at
 first glance, everything looks intelligible, so they just click through
 the installation. (Many don't even see the installation wizard because
 most hosting websites just install WP for them.) After that, they either
 never look at the settings, don't know where to find them, or in many
 cases, ''can't'' change the settings even if they wanted to because some
 web master has set it up and is the only one with the permissions to do
 so. I've encountered countless times where the owner of the website has
 told me that they "didn't realize that it was doing this" and "didn't know
 where to find it".\\\\As such, the default locale really needs to be
 changed.

 2. Of course, realizing that `en-GB` is just another localized variant
 that might be unsuitable for some others, I suggested creating a new
 locale, which would be international/Oxford English (as `en`), that would
 be the default for all installations. This locale would use all the
 internationally standard formats, such as RFC 2822 for full-text dates
 (`DD Month YYYY`), ISO 8601 for numeric dates (`YYYY-MM-DD`), and
 international/Oxford English for the text. This would truly be a good
 default because of said features (it would apply to the most people and is
 the most neutral), and anyone who wants to explicitly choose a more
 specific regional locale can do so if they wish (`en-GB` for people in the
 UK, `en-US` for people in the US, etc.).\\\\Because of said neutrality,
 another added benefit of creating such a locale (as mentioned by another
 commenter above) is that other English locales' translation files would
 not need to redefine the strings for most of the keys/messages because
 international English applies to most of the locales. For example, having
 the date format be `DD Month YYYY` applies to every English locale other
 than `en-US`; having the text `Customize` would apply to `en-US`, `en-CA`,
 and even `en-GB` and `en-IN` (unless those locales make the administrative
 decision to prefer ''-ise'' endings over ''-ize'' endings); and so
 on.\\\\So, there are numerous benefits to this. And this idea was even
 supported by many developers in this thread and the other ticket marked as
 duplicate.

 While no. 2 is not essential (doing just no. 1 would solve the fundamental
 issue of bad defaults), doing it would be much more beneficial to WP as a
 whole. I understand that changing the default locale is not easy (though,
 frankly, it was a poor decision to default to US English to begin with),
 but at this point given WP's global reach, it's absolutely necessary. I'm
 even ready to help with this effort if others are unmotivated to do it. I
 was hoping this could've been synchronized with the 6.x major release
 (since it would be a breaking change), but that unfortunately didn't
 happen.

-- 
Ticket URL: <https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/48152#comment:16>
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