this post was submitted on 06 Mar 2025
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I can’t believe nobody has done this list yet. I mean, there is one about names, one about time and many others on other topics, but not one about languages yet (except one honorable mention that comes close). So, here’s my attempt to list all the misconceptions and prejudices I’ve come across in the course of my long and illustrious career in software localisation and language technology. Enjoy – and send me your own ones!

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

"Every country has exactly one “national” language." - Switzerland meanwhile lol

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago (3 children)

"All languages (that use the Latin alphabet) have the same alphabetical sorting order." oh this one is very unexpected to me. Does someone know an example? I'm curious

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

In German Ä comes after A, in Swedish Ä comes after Z

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

In Denmark we have the digraph "aa" that is the same as "å". Since "å" is the last letter in the Danish alphabet, "aa" must be sorted likewise. Hence the ordering Aalborg -> Allerup -> Middelfart is incorrect and the correct ordering is Allerup -> Middelfart -> Aalborg.

The exception is if two a's are pronounced as separate vowels e.g. due to compounding words: "ekstra" + "arbejde" gives "ekstraarbejde" but here it is not pronounced as "å" so ekstraarbejde -> ekstrabetaling is correct ordering as well

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danish_and_Norwegian_alphabet

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

It's not too smelly, but it's not completely benign either.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago
[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Many examples are listed on Wikipedia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alphabetical_order#Language-specific_conventions

For French, the last accent in a given word determines the order.[14] For example, in French, the following four words would be sorted this way: cote < côte < coté < côté. The letter e is ordered as e é è ê ë (œ considered as oe), same thing for o as ô ö.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

The last three I think are especially important - many people don't really understand how political national flags can be and that they never really just represent a people/region/language in a completely unbiased way.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago
  • There is always only one correct way to spell anything.

“gray" and "grey" are both correct spellings of the color between black and white.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

There are perfect guidelines on preparing translatable strings in the GNU gettext documentation.

[–] [email protected] 46 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Icons that are based on English puns and wordplay are easily understood by speakers of other languages.

This reminded me of one of those Top Gear "drive across a foreign country in weird vehicles" specials where Jeremy Clarkson needed to borrow a cable to jump-start his car, and laboriously mimed out jumping for "jump", and walking a dog for "lead", to a perplexed local. Richard Hammond was cracking up but finally managed to point out what a fool Clarkson was being.

Geolocation is an accurate way to predict the user’s language.

And as an addendum to this, in 2025 nobody should be using Windows' "Non-latin/-unicode character set" setting to guess the user's preferred language. That's a pre-WinXP kludge. I'm specifically looking at you, Intel integrated graphics software writers, but you have plenty of company, don't worry.

[–] [email protected] 41 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Geolocation is an accurate way to predict the user’s language.

This makes me so angry. It really really really really really does.

Despite setting everything to English I still get my receipts in French. And all because my IP is CG-NAT to the capital which is marked as french speaking.

What is so hard about letting me decide. The absolute fucking arrogance thinking you as a company know better than me in which language I would like to be served.

Eat a dick Microsoft.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago

For real. I've seen the fingerprinting info, I know your website can see what language I've set, so display your website in that language!

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