[Lingo] British English

[Nguyen Vu Hung <vuhung16plus@example.com>]

FYI,

What do you think?


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Wols Lists <antlists@example.com>
Date: Wed, Feb 2, 2011 at 4:40 AM
Subject: Re: [Libreoffice] over-long extensions manager list ...
To: libreoffice@example.com


On 01/02/11 09:51, Tor Lillqvist wrote:
> And do we *really* want to imply than American English is needed by everyone? Why not British English? Shouldn't we here in Europe at least be writing in British English?

British English? What's that? THERE'S NO SUCH THING!

I'm a brit, and all this stuff about "British English" really pisses me
off personally. English is spoken by the saxons (the English).
Sassenachs (Angles, or Lowland Scots) speak Scots. The true Scot speaks
Gaelic. And the Welsh, surprisingly, speak Welsh.

(Interesting snippet. Scotia - the land of the Scots - is in fact Ireland.)

This picture is, of course, not helped by the fact that the majority of
people living in Scotland are, in fact, English - the Scots themselves
having for the most part been driven out and emigrated to the colonies.
And the majority of people living in Wales are also English (typically
Cornish tin miners who moved north, but who are probably more closely
related to the Welsh than the saxon English!).

Britain is NOT a homogenous country with a homogenous language. There is
no such thing as British English (which is an American invention)
because, culturally speaking, there is no such thing as Britain to share
a common language!


Sorry - this blast isn't particularly aimed at anyone - but it does show
the dangers of outsiders presuming to know what is appropriate for
somewhere else!

However, if we are going to go down this sort of route, seeing as the
installer knows the country (hopefully), maybe we could go down the
route of "all dictionaries", "all dictionaries for your country",
"choose from all dictionaries", "choose from all dictionaries for your
country". So, for example, Britain would come up with "English, Gaelic,
Welsh" (and maybe Scots, Cornish, whatever). Finland would give
"Finnish, Swedish". Etc etc. That would make the initial choice far
simpler and more comprehensible, but if people *want* an enormous choice
they can get it.


And all this from someone proud to consider themselves European :-) My
father was English through and through, my mother is the daughter of a
German and a white Jaimaican/Scot.

Cheers,
Wol
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-- 
Best Regards,
Nguyen Hung Vu [aka: NVH] ( in Vietnamese: Nguyễn Vũ Hưng )
vuhung16plus{remove}@example.com , YIM: vuhung16 , Skype: vuhung16plus