XPost: comp.lang.fortran, comp.lang.c++
From: david.brown@hesbynett.no

On 01/02/2026 18:21, James Kuyper wrote:
> On 2026-02-01 05:35, David Brown wrote:
> ...
>> I fully understand why many people from non-English-speaking countries
>> sometimes find it best to have an English locale or language settings on
>> their systems.  But I have never understood why they pick US English for
>> the purpose.  Despite the Brexit madness, UK standards are far closer to
>> European norms than the US standards are.  And for many purposes, those
>> norms are nearly global - the US is the only one that is different.
> Because the US is fairly big, and has economic power disproportionate to
> it's size, so it's peculiarities get catered to more often than might
> otherwise seem justified. I am a US citizen, but I'm not endorsing this,
> merely describing it.

Sure - the US has a lot of influence on the rest of the world for a
great many reasons (some good, some bad, with that judgement being
highly subjective).  We are using a protocol written in the USA,
transported over a network system developed (at least initially) in the
USA, to discuss a programming language from the USA.  I've no problem
with that.

But when people in other countries want to choose an English language
environment (because English has a lot of influence on the world - for
good reasons and bad reasons), why pick an environment that has more
incompatibilities and baggage than necessary?  I expect it is mostly a
matter of sticking to default choices unless you know you need something
different, and simply not thinking about the alternatives.

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