[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:  closed
 Priority:  normal       |   Milestone:
Component:  I18N         |     Version:
 Severity:  normal       |  Resolution:  wontfix
 Keywords:  close        |     Focuses:
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Comment (by getsnoopy):

 @tobifjellner

 > And since you main argument is that you want to be able to just declare
 "en" as your locale, then this would be easy accomplished by just adding
 International English as a new locale. We won't even need to add any
 translations to this locale, since WordPress by default uses the source
 string if there's no translation available.

 That is not my main argument. My main argument is to change the default
 locale of WordPress to one that actually aligns with the default for the
 world, which is either `en_GB` or `en` (international English, which would
 have to be created).

 I was only suggesting creating a new locale so as to make it a good
 compromise for it being a good default for the most number of people. In
 the absence of that, I would be fine with making `en_GB` the default,
 since that also closely aligns with that the reality is.

 > Originally, WordPress was developed as an application that was only
 using en_US. When localization was added, en_US was reserved as the source
 locale.
 > If we would change that value now, then there will be a lot of strange
 compatibility problems with many themes and plugins, especially with
 custom-developed code.

 That is understandable, but that's why I was saying that we do this only
 at the juncture of the next major version release. That would give enough
 time to communicate to all plugin developers to update their default
 strings to use `en` or `en_GB` in mind. If they still don't by that time,
 it's "fine" in the sense that most of the English-word strings would
 remain the same between `en_US` and any of the other English locales,
 `en_GB` and `en` included; it's mostly only the formatting of dates and
 times that would be different, so it's not a "big deal".

 (As an example—though it might not be a representative sample—this whole
 comment has no words which would be different among any of the variants of
 English, let alone between `en_US` and `en` or `en_GB`.)

 And even in those cases of incompatibility, it would be no different to
 what you seem to be suggesting is already happening in the plugin
 ecosystem, where people may use Swahili, for example, in their default
 plugin strings without providing any translations despite the default
 strings being assumed to be in `en_US`. In this case, the laggard plugin
 developers would have plugins which still use strings that would be using
 `en_US` content (or whatever their strings happen to be in), though the
 default is assumed to be in `en` or `en_GB`.

 It's essentially an "opt-in" or "do it at your own convenience" model that
 is not disruptive because the default is merely going from one kind of
 English to another (and not from English to an entirely different
 language).

 > My biggest concern about that route is rather that some developers will
 see this as an invitation to more prominently than today display other
 languages in their code, and then just translate their
 English|French|Spanish strings to "en", leaving en_US with the original
 strings, and making translations to other languages trickier, since you'll
 then not have our "common denominator" English as a source string.

 I'm not sure I follow.

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Ticket URL: <https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/48152#comment:23>
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