Standardizing on Oxford English

Standardizing on Oxford English

[Varun Varada]

Hello,

I noticed the Documentation/SubmittingPatches file reads:

> We prefer to gradually reconcile the inconsistencies in favor of US English

May I ask why? US English is highly idiosyncratic, illogical, and used
by a minority of the English-speaking population of the world (see
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_and_British_English_spelling_differences).
Since British English has its own idiosyncrasies, why not use Oxford
English, the most international English that is used by millions of
the world? It is used by practically every international organization
(such as the UN, ISO, IEC, BIPM, NATO, etc.), taught in practically
every school in non-native-English-speaking countries (and even
native-English-speaking ones), and used by myriad publications (e.g.,
Nature) and people around the world. Given the inherently
international nature of the Git project, it makes complete sense to
follow suit.

Regards,
Varun

Re: Standardizing on Oxford English

[Konstantin Ryabitsev]

On Fri, Jun 05, 2020 at 12:34:21AM -0500, Varun Varada wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I noticed the Documentation/SubmittingPatches file reads:
> 
> > We prefer to gradually reconcile the inconsistencies in favor of US English
> 
> May I ask why? 

Traditionally, the "GNU C" locale expects that the character set used 
for all output should be in "us-ascii" -- a choice dictated by 
historical encoding standards. The most logical language to use when 
writing in something called "us-ascii" is "US English." :)

This has little current day relevance, but projects with code histories 
spanning decades tend to stick with whatever the expectation is for the 
"C" locale as their default language.

> US English is highly idiosyncratic, illogical, and used
> by a minority of the English-speaking population of the world (see
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_and_British_English_spelling_differences).

You could try being Canadian and sit on both of those chairs at the same 
time. Then you can use both "colour" and "authorization" in the same 
text. :)

I think that since git was "born" in the US (courtesy of a 
Swedish-speaking Finnish immigrant), it makes sense for it to continue 
to use US-English as the internal default. There's already a way to 
cause it to output your preferred version of English by setting your 
locale appropriately.

-K

Re: Standardizing on Oxford English

[brian m. carlson]

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On 2020-06-05 at 05:34:21, Varun Varada wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I noticed the Documentation/SubmittingPatches file reads:
> 
> > We prefer to gradually reconcile the inconsistencies in favor of US English
> 
> May I ask why? US English is highly idiosyncratic, illogical, and used
> by a minority of the English-speaking population of the world (see
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_and_British_English_spelling_differences).
> Since British English has its own idiosyncrasies, why not use Oxford
> English, the most international English that is used by millions of
> the world? It is used by practically every international organization
> (such as the UN, ISO, IEC, BIPM, NATO, etc.), taught in practically
> every school in non-native-English-speaking countries (and even
> native-English-speaking ones), and used by myriad publications (e.g.,
> Nature) and people around the world. Given the inherently
> international nature of the Git project, it makes complete sense to
> follow suit.

I should point out that many of your arguments about U.S. English are
true of English in general.  As a native U.S. English speaker who also
knows Spanish and French, I can confidently say that even French, which
many find difficult, has a mostly regular correspondence between letters
and sounds, and, overall, a reasonably consistent set of rules for verb
conjugations, albeit with many irregular verbs.  English, in any form,
has none of that.  It is, as languages go, highly irregular.

I didn't write the text in question, but I suspect the reason is
practicality: most open source projects use U.S. English, and most
contributors to Git are able to write the U.S. variety.  It's hard for
me personally to write Oxford English because I have never written or
spoken it, and when I need to consult a reference, the one I have is
from the University of Chicago, not Oxford.  I suspect many Canadians
and second-language speakers from at least parts of the Americas are
more likely to be familiar with the U.S. variety than Oxford or British
English, although I don't know for certain.

This isn't a defense of U.S. English (after all, I wrote the first
paragraph), but just an acknowledgement of the way things are.  This
project is all about practicality rather than purity; to quote from
CodingGuidelines:

   Again, we live in the real world, and it is sometimes a
   judgement call, the decision based more on real world
   constraints people face than what the paper standard says.
-- 
brian m. carlson: Houston, Texas, US
OpenPGP: https://keybase.io/bk2204

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Re: Standardizing on Oxford English

[Varun Varada]

On Fri, 5 Jun 2020 at 18:24, brian m. carlson
<sandals@crustytoothpaste.net> wrote:
>
> I should point out that many of your arguments about U.S. English are
> true of English in general.  As a native U.S. English speaker who also
> knows Spanish and French, I can confidently say that even French, which
> many find difficult, has a mostly regular correspondence between letters
> and sounds, and, overall, a reasonably consistent set of rules for verb
> conjugations, albeit with many irregular verbs.  English, in any form,
> has none of that.  It is, as languages go, highly irregular.

Agreed, as I'm a native US English who knows French as well. But I
guess my point is that out of all of the varieties, Oxford English is
the most prevalent, international, and etymologically correct, which
is why I suggested it.

>
> I didn't write the text in question, but I suspect the reason is
> practicality: most open source projects use U.S. English, and most
> contributors to Git are able to write the U.S. variety.  It's hard for
> me personally to write Oxford English because I have never written or
> spoken it, and when I need to consult a reference, the one I have is
> from the University of Chicago, not Oxford.  I suspect many Canadians
> and second-language speakers from at least parts of the Americas are
> more likely to be familiar with the U.S. variety than Oxford or British
> English, although I don't know for certain.

The reference for Oxford is the first spelling on lexico.com, which is
a very widely-used resource. Canadian English is essentially identical
to Oxford except for the -yze set of words, for which Oxford maintains
the etymologically correct -yse endings. And second-language speakers
learn Oxford by and large, though many from Brazil apparently end up
just moving to the US to learn English, where they necessarily learn
US English.

However, I never found the guidance of doing what other people are
doing a convincing one, especially when the alternatives are more
logical/convincing/"better". Though I do recognize Konstantin's point
that the project is decades old.

> This isn't a defense of U.S. English (after all, I wrote the first
> paragraph), but just an acknowledgement of the way things are.  This
> project is all about practicality rather than purity; to quote from
> CodingGuidelines:
>
>    Again, we live in the real world, and it is sometimes a
>    judgement call, the decision based more on real world
>    constraints people face than what the paper standard says.
> --

While I somewhat sympathize with the sentiment, from the text, it
seemed like things were in a mixed state, so I wanted to suggest
picking the standard that makes the most international sense. As the
usual guidance goes: when faced with two choices of relatively equal
difficulty, choose the one that makes the most sense long-term.

Varun