> First of all, the difference between different variants of English > is negligible, in my opinion. > I never heard of anyone misunderstanding something > because it was in en_US rather than in en_GB. There have been quite a few bad mistakes caused by this - usually by bad interpretation of dates. > I know Americans spell a few words wrongly, but so what? Many words have completely different meanings. Ending changes about -ise and -ize are minor. Some words have enough context to avoid confusion, but words like "bill","check","boot", "gas" often do not. Other words can be offensive in one dialect and not in the other (Pity the ex-Red Hatter whose username was "wanger" for example, or things like 'git'). Some words even refer to entirely different locations (classic being 'the bathroom'). Its less of an issue than it could be for much of Fedora as the bigger differences are in colloquial use (thus 'I blagged a biro from this geezer at the jumble' isn't generally parsable in US english, and of course the infamous 'I'm just popping out to smoke a fag' example of misunderstanding, along with gems like 'I grow pot plants'. > I tested a group of students some years ago, > to see if they knew whether a book was published in the US or the UK, > and none of them had the slightest idea. Try literate ones in future 8) although Irish English seems to be a mix of US and UK English with (in some areas) traces of the Gaelic in the grammar so perhaps it is less clear there. Alan
