Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2017 January 17

Welcome to the Wikipedia Language Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

January 17

English of the GUI

Have major software corporations like Microsoft, Apple and Google ever offered their graphic user interfaces for their software (MS Windows, MS Office, Mac OS X, iOS, Android, etc.) in other than the US variety of English, that is in British English? What about Canadian English (centre, colour, cancelled, but -ize)? What about open/free software (Ubuntu, Linux Mint, etc.) as well? I know LibreOffice and Firefox are offered in the British and South African versions, but I do not know if it is really about the spelling. In Google Chrome one may choose different Englishes (though I have not spotted much difference in the GUI, apart from favourite). I repeat: the GUI, not spellchecker.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 07:42, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

[1] [2] --81.96.84.137 (talk) 07:57, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

Your very old second link is about Mac OS 9, an obsolete Apple operating system. Akseli9 (talk) 13:36, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

Yes it is, and it's deliberate, as the question is Have they ever offered their graphic user interfaces in British English? --217.140.96.140 (talk) 14:51, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

Mac OS X Apple's GUI can be set in many different languages, including several different Englishes. You do that the first time you install your new Mac, then you can change it any time you like. When buying a Mac you can also choose US keyboard or British keyboard. Akseli9 (talk) 13:36, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

My Mac OSX system offers English in the options UK / Australia / Canada / India / Ireland / New Zealand / Singapore / South Africa and US. There are also a quite a few native American languages and Irish, Scots, Scottish Gaelic and Welsh. Of course, not all of these are English proper thought they are used in the Anglosphere. I have no idea about Windows. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 15:47, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

There's an Ubuntu English localisation project (wiki based), with links to GNOME (also wiki based) and KDE (possibly dead) projects. The wikil nature of the two survivors gives me some doubt as to how official they are. Henry^Flower 17:11, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

Windows has (since W95, if not before) offered British English as an option. It affects, among other things, keyboard layout, date and time, and currency. W10 labels it as English (United Kingdom). Bazza (talk) 15:39, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

Very interesting, but not at all relevant to the OP's question. --Viennese Waltz 15:55, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

Don't quite understand that. All those can be displayed in the GUI, hence my contribution. Bazza (talk) 19:19, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

@Bazza 7: Those settings did not affect the GUI itself, they did not change how words in GUI were spelled or what words were used (e.g. tick instead of check). The first version of Windows which does this is Widnows 8, as it can be seen from the link above by the anon 81.96.84.137. Though I'd like to see in detail what really they have changed in the UK version.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 00:36, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

@Akseli9 and Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM: Does that really affect the interface (menus, etc.), do they really write centre, colour, favourite, etc.? Because here Apple lists only simply "English".--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 00:24, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

I just set my region and language to UK and British English, restarted my Mac, and to my disappointment, "favorite" still spells "favorite", "color" still spells "color" and "center" still spells "center" in various menus. Akseli9 (talk) 18:59, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

As far as I know, Microsoft does exactly the same. I've never seen any installation of Windows, regardless of the language option chosen, which used correct British spelling. Dbfirs 19:22, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

@Akseli9: What version do you use? It seems the language settings are different across the various versions, so you may have only changed the spelling settings, like shown here. However, here they claim it changes "the language you see in menus and dialogs" as well. False claim?--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 23:52, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

Your first link is about the text (typing) settings in the "keyboard" preferences. You can choose British English, US English, Australian English, Canadian English, Indian English, Singapore English, Japanese English, French, Danish, German, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Norvegian, Polish, Brasilian, Portugese, Finnish, Swedish, Turk, Russian and Korean, as your default spell checker. Your second link is about the GUI in the "region and language" preferences. It offers many choices, some are very close like Russian and Ukrainian, Czech and Slovak, Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese, but there is only one English, and it appears to be US English. Akseli9 (talk) 20:44, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

@Akseli9: I understand that, but what actually had you changed that the result was the GUI of your computer was not affected?--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 01:33, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

I changed the Region & Language preference. It's the one you must change to change the GUI language of your Mac OS X mac. I also tried changing both the Region & Language preference and the Keyboard preference, to no avail. In Mac OS X the text capabilities offer several different Englishes and many other languages, but the GUI numerous languages options still contain only the US version of English. Akseli9 (talk) 06:38, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

@Akseli9: Thank you for your participation. One more question. You said: but the GUI numerous languages options still contain only the US version of English. Do you mean on your computer there is no choice here for other Englishes? Or simply, as we've found out, the GUI is all the same?--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 15:48, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

On my Mac OS X (Sierra) computer there is a choice for 9 different Englishes (and many other languages), but as we've found out, the so-called "English-UK" version spells color, favorite and center instead of colour, favourite and centre. Akseli9 (talk) 19:57, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

Other languages

I might open a new topic, but I'll ask here. I'm just wondering if two versions of Portuguese, Norwegian, and probably, Malay/Indonesian and Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian are any different, or software developers do not bother themselves making two different GUIs, and those differences are all about spellcheckers/data format/etc.?--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 00:12, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

As far as I know, there is only one version of Portuguese (pt:Wikipédia:Página principal). For those Wikipedias that have two or more versions, each version is independent. Malay Wikipedia = 286,668 articles (depth = 16, which is a measure of quality), Indonesian = 392,132 articles (depth = 107), Norwegian (Bokmål) articles = 460,184 (depth = 36), Norwegian (Nynorsk) articles = 132,056 (depth = 17). —Stephen (talk) 17:52, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

There is only one pt:wp in the same way as there is only one en:wp. Nevertheless in the same way that there are different varieties of English there is European and Brazilian Portuguese. As Portugal only has a population of about ten million and Brazil has a much larger population pt:wp uses the Brazilian variety. 2A02:C7F:BE2B:5600:C049:EE2:6F7F:FFEC (talk) 21:20, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

Really? That's not what pt:Wikipédia:Versões da língua portuguesa says: "Um artigo está tão correto se for escrito em português do Brasil como em português europeu ou africano." (An article is as correct when written in Brazilian Portuguese as it is in European or African Portuguese). Compare, for example, the lemmas Seção (botânica) (Brazilian spelling) and Secção (militar) (European spelling). The varieties co-exist in a similar (though not quite identical) way to en.wp's. ---Sluzzelin talk 21:47, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

@Stephen G. Brown: I was speaking about the GUI of software not about Wikipedias in any way, so this off-topic discussion is not relevant at all.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 01:28, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

Apple's operating system Mac OS X, offers two GUI versions of Portugese. Here are all the GUI language options for a Mac. Only one version of Norwegian as you can see. Akseli9 (talk) 06:47, 21 January 2017 (UTC)