XPost: comp.lang.c++
From: david.brown@hesbynett.no
On 02/02/2026 11:49, Michael S wrote:
> On Mon, 2 Feb 2026 11:27:53 +0100
> David Brown wrote:
>
>> On 02/02/2026 01:11, James Kuyper wrote:
>>> On 2026-02-01 17:01, David Brown wrote:
>>> ...
>>>> 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.
>>>
>>> The US has three times as many native speakers of English than the
>>> entire rest of the world combined, including the entire British
>>> Commonwealth.
>>
>> There are about 400 million native English speakers around the world,
>> of which about 230 are in the USA. Of course any such numbers will
>> be estimates, with surveys being from different years, but it
>> certainly looks like you overestimate the numerical ratios.
>>
>> Still, the native speaker numbers are not the relevant numbers here -
>> it is primarily the second language users that matter. That is, of
>> course, even more difficult to judge well - there is no consensus on
>> how well a second language must be understood to count as an English
>> speaker. Best guesses, as far as I can see, are about 1.1 billion.
>>
>>> When someone from a non-English speaking country sets up
>>> an English compatible environment, there's a pretty good chance he's
>>> doing so to communicate with people in the US, rather than other
>>> parts of English-speaking world.
>>>
>>
>> No, by far the most likely reason for a non-native English speaker to
>> speak English is to communicate with another non-native English
>> speaker. English is the lingua franca of the world.
>>
>> But my point was more about the factors /other/ than the language.
>> The whole world, other than the USA, uses metric for everything
>> technical. The whole world, other than the USA, Canada and Mexico
>> uses A4 and related paper sizes. The whole world, other than the
>> USA, uses either little-endian or big-endian dates.
>>
>> Thus for perhaps 80% of people in the world using a computer and
>> communicating in English, UK locale settings are a better fit than US
>> locale settings. (For many, perhaps most, other English variants -
>> like Indian English locale, would be even better.)
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
> That sounds about right except for keyboard layout.
> For majority of non-native English user (not necessarily speakers, many
> computer users can't speak English, even more can't understand English
> spoken by natives, but they read and write English not too badly) US
> layout would be more practical than UK layout.
>
If that is the case, then that is a good reason for choosing US layout.
But AFAIK the differences between the US and the UK layouts are very
small. And a large proportion of computer users use Latin keyboards,
even if their native languages use significantly different writing
systems. So keyboard layout is often partially independent of other
language and locale choices. For example, I use a Norwegian layout
keyboard, but have my locale set to UK (with the region set to Norway).
Changing to the UK keyboard layout would be silly - it would mean some
symbols are in a different place, and I could not type the Norwegian
letters I need when writing in Norwegian. Changing to US layout would
be a step sillier, and there would be no advantages.
If you are used to a keyboard with a different writing system - say,
Greek - then you might find it convenient to change to a Latin based
layout for writing in English. But I see no reason why you might have a
preference for US layout over UK - either would be fine.
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
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