> Accrington Stanley!

Who are they?!

Being proud of your culture including your language and exercising it, at the risk of readers not understanding everything immediately, is not racism. In the worst case, a non-British gets curious about one expression or the other and looks it up. That's engagement.

> Here's the thing. No.

Hahaha

I decided to have a bit of fun with the Accept-Lang header, if you're british it shows a totally different version of my blog including changing my name to a more british variant, a background including tea, phone booths, kings guards, busses, bulldogs and flags... and the colour scheme changes to RWB.

https://blog.dijit.sh

The original plan was actually to write two variants of every blog post, one where I write using dry wit, banter and colloquialisms, and the other with a more to the point and professional tone.

The reason I chose not to was because I thought it might be confusing when discussing the content on link aggregators (like HN)- I'm not so arrogant as to believe I write anything worth discussing, but it would violate the principle of least surprise... so I chose not to do it.

I'm curious to hear other peoples opinions, since this is the exact right subject to ask the question to relevant crowd..

I think that by exploring how different cultures and languages communicate about things opens the mind. There are concepts that can't be easily/succinctly explained in English but can in other languages. I think that we should be encouraging such breadth of thought because it allows us to appreciate new aspects of the world we live in.

There's two dimensions here, one is US-American readers, the other is how a lot of the rest of the (non-English) world is mostly exposed to US culture through (social) media.

But that's more of a thing for millennials, I would've thought younger generations get exposed to more diverse cultures / languages / etc.

Anyway, for British-English full of cultural references, watch some of these compilations https://www.youtube.com/@OneGazillionEccentricGoldfish, Scouse is nearly incomprehensible (to my ESL ears). For difficult US-English full of cultural references, watch The Wire or Treme. Try both without subtitles.

It should be just "en", since we invented and it's the one true version:-)

I have to admit I have every device running some sort of voice assistant on en_GB or Australian the American voices always sound like parodies or the Walmart greeter. The intonation is perpetually trying to please me, as if programmed for relentless customer service. It's hard to explain, but there's something exhausting about a voice that's always smiling.

By eck lad, Accrington Stanley?

I would love to be able to write in proper narfuck, and have which ever screen reader read it out in the authentic accent for that area (central norfolk, not norwich, broadlands or the wierdos in the fens.)

There is something deeply joyful (to me) about a thick regional accent.

Someone really has his panties in a bunch.

This reminds me of the time when I removed en-US from windows, leaving just en-GB, and it blue screened.

It's both surprising and irritating how many US-centric things are just assumed. (Don't even get me started on paper sizes...! ;) )

I am the only Brit in the department I work in. No one gets the cultural references or British idioms I use, and I've found myself significantly changing the language I use to a very utilitarian and direct style to prevent the endless blank stares... reading this blog post just made me realise that this self-editing has made my interactions rather more 'flat' and unnatural, as they now lack spontaneity, with everything passing through a secondary filter before leaving my brain.

Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but nobody has any moral obligation to be inclusive in content they share on their personal blog, for free, and nobody should reasonably expect it.

"This blog is written in en-GB"

Excuse me, but I believe you meant to say this bloug is written in en-GB.

More seriously... you know, 30 or 40 years ago, I can sort of understand this attitude. Today, in the amount of time it takes you to complain, you could have popped the word into Google or something instead and learned what it was instead. Probably in less than the amount of time it took you to complain for an online blog. And you might learn something interesting.

When I grew up in the 1980s and 1990s, there was a thing called the "generation gap". It originally referred to something closer to the difference between the Hippies and their Greatest Generation parents, but it was smoothly repurposed into the differences between GenX and the Boomers, and the way we could have slang that was not decodeable by our parents.

I haven't heard the term in a while. The "generation gap" isn't what it used to be and there is less need for a term for it. I'm not entirely certain but I probably heard about "6-7" before my kids did. Urban Dictionary may not be the most reliable source in an academic sense but you can get a very fast sense of what something means from its entries, especially if you read them with a postmodern analysis eye and not just for the plain text.

I also find it a bit weird when people my age or the boomer generation complain about the kid's slang, because it's so easy to decode. You can't possible have a national-level kid's slang without an internet explainer 15 seconds away. It's not that hard anymore.

I was raised by an English mum[0] (scouse, to be precise -actually, her mum was scouse, me mum was posh).

I've traveled all over the world, and the one place that I've had the most difficulty understanding, was London. Cockney is hard. It's not just the patois. It's the cultural references and slang.

[0] https://cmarshall.com/miscellaneous/SheilaMarshall.htm

Just set the page's theme to "Drunk". It'll be OK.

> OK, accents are a whole can of worms. Regional English is varied. I'm not sure if there are any BCP-style tags for intra-country accents.

This comment is written in en-GB-Brummie.

I read several blogs that use British English, including this OP's blog. Some of my favourite blogs in my RSS reader are British English blogs, or at least they use British English spellings and grammar. I find their use of the English language very charming and funny in a unique way.

It surprises me that anyone would feel entitled to ask a blogger to change the variety of English they use. American English is only one of many forms of English. The world is richer for its many varieties of English, and languages, and that diversity makes it more interesting, not less.

The French didn't like it when the Lingua Franca switched from French to English and the Brits still whine that British English is no longer the dominant variety.

It's a trade-off: you can write in your regional dialect or you can write in a more widely understood global style.

I'm an American (unfortunately). Online, especially in places like HN, I try to use British spelling. It seems more academic if that makes sense

>When The Wicked Witch of the TERFs

Don't associate that cordyceps with Elphaba

Fun post but sort of ironic to end with a lecture on "cultural hegemony" from....a Brit!

Before reading the blog post but after reading the HN comments:

"oh wow an Englishman complaining about being forced to change their language? how hypocritical! England is responsible for untold culture loss by force! Just look at Ireland! Australia! Whole swathes of Africa or Asia! Even New Zealand has serious culture loss despite integration with the amazing Māori people. Hell, there were programs to eradicate Welsh, Gaelic, Scots. English colonial education forced English language and culture over local cultures. How can he complain?"

After reading the blog post:

"Oh, that's actually totally reasonable perspective the author has"

This French person has taken to writing in en-GB, as a token of protest against current USAian politics. I thank the USA for this step in French-British rapprochement !

Also, in the late 90's, The Register made me love British English... Local accents are great branding.

Fully agree with the author, just like I write Portuguese in European Portuguese, not Brazilian Portuguese, African Portuguese or any other variation, just because our population is smaller.

Incidently I always change automatic language correction tools to English GB, I live in this side of the Atlantic, and that is variant I learnt while growing up.

Americans often don't twig how many random american terms we brits have to learn the double meaning of and don't pipe up about. I'm not talking the well-known ones like cookies, but even things like "the ER" meaning "A&E"

Sometimes it's their turn to repay the favour

Reader View button is your friend here.

But they should just stop reading. It's actually not ok that it's unfamiliar, because makes you reread and get confused and distracted, all for some silly reference that doesn't make a big difference. Life is short! You can read the hard stuff when it's worth it, and just skip the rest. Surely that's the most common thing to do.

The answer is definitely still a big no, but for me the reasoning is because it will make it worse. And you apparently aren't the target audience anyway, so why should I care if you stick around.

(Whereas in the case of harry potter, the goal was to sell books, not just to produce something good).

"My mum said that if I didn't drink enough milk then I'd only be good enough to play for Accrington Stanley."

"Accrington Stanley!, Who are they?"

"Exaaaccttlyyy...."