The Frustrating Erasure of English (English English) in American Tech: a Rant

There's this moment–and I suspect you've had it too–where you're setting up some shiny new piece of software, and you get to the language selection screen. You're hopeful. You're optimistic. Surely this time they'll have remembered that England exists.

And then you see it:

English (United States)

English (International)

Thanks, Microsoft. Really. Deeply appreciated.

The Absurdity of It All

Here's what properly winds me up about this: the language is literally named after England. Not America. Not "International." England. The clue is right there in the bloody name, and yet somehow we've become an afterthought in our own linguistic legacy.

It's like if Italy didn't get an Italian language option, or if France had to settle for "French (International)" whilst everyone else got their specific regional variants. Except it's not hypothetical–it's just Tuesday for anyone trying to set up Windows, or Office, or half the tech platforms that dominate our digital lives.

The Microsoft situation is particularly infuriating because it's so perfectly emblematic of the problem. When you're downloading a Windows ISO, you get two English options. Two. And neither of them is the actual place the language comes from. It's the kind of oversight that would be funny if it wasn't so consistently, reliably irritating.

I'm mostly English–three-quarters, if we're being precise about it–with a bit of Scottish heritage thrown in for good measure. Raised in England. Educated in England. And yet when I have to use Windows (ugh), apparently my language doesn't exist. Brilliant.

And before anyone gets the wrong idea: I'm not arguing for British English dominance. I'm not saying it should be the default over American English. I'm just asking for equal standing. We created the fucking language. Is it really too much to ask for an actual English (UK) or English (England) option alongside English (US)? Not instead of. Not prioritised over. Just... there. Acknowledged. Treated as equally valid.

It's Not Just Microsoft

Microsoft might be the most obvious offender, but they're hardly alone. This pattern repeats across the tech industry with depressing regularity:

Google does slightly better by offering "English (UK)" alongside "English (US)", but the UK option feels like an afterthought. It's there, buried in the list, but the American English is the default, the primary, the assumed.

Apple handles it reasonably well, giving you proper regional options. They'll let you pick English (UK) and actually respect what that means for date formats, spellings, and measurements. Probably the least annoying of the major tech companies in this regard, which feels appropriate given their attention to detail elsewhere.

Social media platforms vary wildly. Some get it. Most don't. You end up with "English" as the default option with no clarification, and surprise–it's American English with American spellings and American date formats and American assumptions about everything from punctuation to phrasing.

I spent ages begging Bluesky to add en-gb as a UI locale option, which they eventually did (credit where it's due). But there's still an open issue I filed about the PDS language dropdown showing the American flag next to "English." Because apparently when you see "English" as a language option, the default assumption is that it's American. Not British. Not even UK. Just... American, with an American flag to really drive the point home.

I suggested they add a PDS environment variable to let server operators choose which flag displays based on locale–show the English flag for en-gb, for instance–or just use the language code as the default and skip the flag imagery entirely. The issue's still open. Hasn't been fixed. Probably won't be, if we're being realistic about priorities.

The worst part is knowing I'm right to be annoyed whilst also understanding why it's not a priority. Market size, development resources, the usual justifications. Doesn't make it less frustrating when your own language gets represented by someone else's flag.

The worst part is the inconsistency. There's no standard. Every platform makes its own choices about whether to acknowledge that English exists in multiple distinct forms, and whether any of those forms should include, you know, England.

The "International English" Cop-Out

Let's talk about "English (International)" for a moment, because that deserves its own section of irritation.

What even is International English? It's a linguistic no-man's-land, a compromise that satisfies precisely nobody. It's not British English. It's not American English. It's some hypothetical neutral ground that exists nowhere except in the language dropdown menus of tech companies who couldn't be arsed to implement proper regional variants.

In practice, "International English" usually means "American English with maybe a few concessions to other regions if we remember." You'll get the American spelling of "color" but maybe–maybe–the British date format if you're lucky. The punctuation follows American conventions. The idioms lean American. It's "international" in the way that the "World Series" is international: in name only.

For those of us who actually speak British English, it's maddening. Every document becomes a minefield of potential autocorrect disasters. You're constantly fighting your own tools, explaining to spell-checkers that yes, "colour" is correct, no, "realise" isn't a typo, and for the love of god, stop trying to change "whilst" to "while."

And here's the particular irony of my situation: I'm a programmer and a poet. In my code, I'm expected to use American spellings–color in CSS, center in alignment properties, initialize in function names. I've got a cspell dictionary in my editors specifically to stop it screaming at me about "Britishisms" when I accidentally let British spellings slip into comments or documentation. But then I switch contexts to write poetry, to craft prose, and suddenly I'm supposed to remember that actually, it's "colour" and "realise" and "whilst."

The cognitive whiplash is exhausting. Half my day is spent deliberately misspelling my own language to appease programming conventions, and the other half is spent fighting autocorrect to preserve proper British English in creative work. It's like being forced to code-switch between correct and incorrect versions of your own language depending on which text editor you're using.

How I Approach It as a Developer

Because of all this, I try my best to be locale-agnostic when I build things, especially on my personal projects like my website . If I’m putting something out into the world, I don’t want to force my own linguistic quirks onto users who might prefer different spellings, formats, or conventions. So I’ll rely on ISO language codes and structured locale files, and I make sure content can adapt to whatever the user’s system preferences are set to. If someone’s browser is set to en-gb, they should see British spellings; if it’s en-us, they get American ones. I don’t always get it perfect, but I care about not repeating the same sloppy assumptions I’ve criticised.

That’s partly self-defence (because I know how annoying it feels when software ignores your preferences) and partly respect for users. The tech industry has the tools to get this right–frameworks for localisation, established standards for language codes, libraries that handle region-specific formats. I figure if I can be thoughtful about it on a personal project, companies with thousands of engineers really don’t have an excuse.

The Practical Consequences (Or: Why This Actually Matters)

This isn't just a matter of hurt feelings or wounded national pride. There are genuine practical consequences to the erasure of English English from tech platforms.

Education suffers. Students using American-defaulted software learn American spellings and conventions, then get marked down in UK schools for following what their tools taught them. Teachers spend unnecessary time correcting "mistakes" that aren't actually mistakes–they're just American English treated as universal English.

Professional communication becomes inconsistent. If your company uses American-defaulted software, you're constantly fighting to maintain British English in your documents. It's exhausting. It's time-consuming. And it creates this weird inconsistency where internal tools use American conventions whilst external-facing content tries to maintain British standards.

Digital archiving becomes complicated. When platforms don't properly distinguish between English variants, searching historical records becomes messy. Try finding documents that use British spellings when the search algorithm assumes American defaults. Good luck.

Accessibility features default wrong. Screen readers, text-to-speech, voice recognition–these tools often default to American pronunciation and phrasing. For users who rely on these features, it's not just annoying; it's a genuine accessibility barrier. I didn't even know Stephen Hawking was English until after he died because he had an American voice on his text-to-speech.

And perhaps most frustratingly: it's completely unnecessary. The technology exists to handle multiple English variants properly. The infrastructure is there. Companies just don't care enough to implement it properly.

The Colonial Irony Nobody Wants to Acknowledge

Here's where it gets uncomfortable: there's an undeniable colonial dynamic to all this that nobody really wants to discuss.

England spent centuries imposing its language on colonised peoples. The spread of English globally is inseparable from the history of British imperialism. And now, in a twist of historical irony, the language has evolved beyond England's control, and the dominant form isn't the British one–it's American.

The tech industry's American-defaulting isn't some conscious payback for centuries of colonialism, obviously. It's just market dynamics: American tech companies dominate globally, so American English becomes the default. But the symbolism is hard to ignore. The former colonial power finds its own language treated as a regional variant of its former colony's version.

And yes, there's a certain cosmic justice to it all. England, so long the linguistic hegemon, now relegated to secondary status in its own language. I understand why some might see this as fitting. I understand the weight of that history, the harm done in English's name, the violence of linguistic imperialism. That understanding doesn't make the spell-checker any less annoying, but it does complicate the complaint.

It's an odd position to be in–inheriting both the language and the legacy, neither of which you chose, both of which shape how the world sees you. Feeling entitled to proper language support whilst knowing that entitlement itself comes from a history of imposing that language on others. Wanting recognition for England whilst understanding exactly why England doesn't deserve recognition for much of what it's done.

The people using the software today aren't the Empire. But we live in its shadow, carry its language, benefit from its historical reach whilst being frustrated by its modern consequences. That's the uncomfortable bit nobody wants to discuss: there's no clean position here. Just layers of historical irony and present-day annoyance, tangled together in language dropdown menus.

Why This Keeps Happening (And Why It Won't Stop)

Let's be honest about why American tech companies keep doing this:

Market size matters. The American market is enormous, and from a business perspective, it makes sense to optimise for your largest user base first. British English speakers are a smaller percentage of global English speakers than American English speakers, so resources get allocated accordingly.

Development costs add up. Properly supporting multiple English variants isn't free. It requires additional localisation work, separate spell-check dictionaries, region-specific date and measurement formats, and ongoing maintenance. For companies making cost-benefit analyses, it's easy to see why British English gets deprioritised.

The internet amplifies American cultural dominance. American tech companies, American social media, American content creators–they all reinforce American English as the "default" version online. It's a feedback loop: platforms optimise for American English because that's what most users encounter, and users encounter American English because platforms optimise for it.

Historical inertia plays a role. Early internet infrastructure and standards were predominantly American. The conventions established in those early days–American spellings in code comments, American date formats in timestamps–became baked into the technical infrastructure. Changing that now requires fighting decades of accumulated precedent.

None of this makes the oversight less infuriating. Understanding why companies do something doesn't make it acceptable. It just makes it predictable, which is somehow worse.

The Solutions Nobody's Implementing

It's not like fixing this would be impossibly difficult. Here are some straightforward solutions that tech companies could implement but mostly don't:

Offer proper regional variants. Don't hide behind "International English." Give users actual English (UK), English (US), English (Australia), English (Canada), and so on. Let people choose the variant that matches their location and educational background.

Make language selection more prominent. Don't bury the language options three menus deep in settings. Ask during initial setup, make it easy to change, and remember user preferences across sessions.

Respect system language settings. If my operating system is set to English (UK), don't default every new app to American English. Respect the system-level locale choice and apply it consistently.

Implement smarter spell-checking. Modern machine learning could easily detect which English variant someone's using and adjust accordingly. If I'm consistently writing "colour" and "realise," the spell-checker should figure out that I'm using British English and stop underlining every other word.

Provide easy variant switching. Sometimes you do need to write in American English–for work, for publications, for collaboration with American colleagues. Make it trivial to switch between variants for different documents or contexts.

Stop conflating language and location. Just because I'm in England doesn't mean I want cricket news by default, and just because I want British spellings doesn't mean I want measurements exclusively in imperial. Let users customise beyond crude regional defaults.

These aren't revolutionary suggestions. They're basic UX improvements that would benefit everyone, not just British English speakers. But they require companies to care enough to invest the resources, and mostly, they don't.

The Generational Acceptance That Drives Me Mad

Here's what really gets me: my generation (I'm 20) has just... accepted this.

We've grown up in an internet dominated by American tech platforms. For us, the assumption that "English" means "American English" online is so deeply baked into our experience that most people don't even think to question it. We code-switch between British spellings in school and American spellings online without thinking about it.

We're bidialectal within our own language, which is completely mad when you actually stop and consider it. We've learned to recognise when "pants" means "trousers" versus "underwear" depending on context. We navigate different conventions automatically. We fight with spell-checkers daily and just accept it as normal.

That adaptation comes with a cost, though. We're losing touch with British idioms and phrasings because we encounter American versions far more frequently online. Our written English becomes a hybrid–what linguists might call Transatlantic English, though that makes it sound more intentional than it is. It's neither purely British nor purely American, just shaped by whichever autocorrect we're using that day.

And nobody seems bothered by this! That's what drives me absolutely spare. We've collectively accepted that our language–the one named after our country–doesn't exist in its proper form online. We've normalised fighting with our own tools. We've decided this is just how things are.

Well, I'm bothered by it. I'm bothered that we've accepted this as inevitable when it's completely fixable. I'm bothered that tech companies can't be arsed to implement proper British English support when they have the resources to do literally anything else. I'm bothered that the place English comes from is treated as an optional regional variant.

The Broader Pattern of American Tech Defaulting

This English language issue is just one symptom of a broader pattern: American tech companies assume America is the default, and everywhere else is a special case that requires extra effort.

Date formats? Month/Day/Year is assumed, because that's what Americans use, never mind that it's objectively the worst possible ordering and the rest of the world uses Day/Month/Year or Year/Month/Day.

Measurements? Everything defaults to imperial units because Americans haven't cottoned on to the metric system yet. The rest of us have to manually switch to sensible measurements. (Yes, I'm aware the UK uses a baffling half-arsed mix of both systems that confuses even those of us who live here–we buy petrol in litres but measure fuel efficiency in miles per gallon, weigh ourselves in stone but buy food in kilograms. It's a mess. But at least we acknowledge the metric system exists.)

Addresses? Forms assume American state/ZIP code formats and break completely when you try to enter a UK postcode.

Phone numbers? The system expects exactly 10 digits with a specific American format and can't cope with international variations.

Payment methods? American credit card types are prominent whilst common European payment systems are buried or missing entirely.

Tax handling? Prices are shown excluding tax because that's how America does it, never mind that the UK (and most of the world) includes VAT in the displayed price.

It's this consistent pattern of American defaults with everywhere else as an afterthought. The language issue is just the most symbolically irritating example because the language is literally named after England.

Living With the Contradiction

Here's the part where I'm supposed to offer some rousing conclusion about demanding better from tech companies.

But honestly? I'm just tired.

I'm tired of fighting with spell-checkers. I'm tired of manually selecting English (UK) in every single application, only to have half of them ignore that setting anyway. I'm tired of explaining to American-developed software that yes, "colour" is a word, and no, I don't need it corrected to "color."

I'm tired of this being treated as a minor inconvenience that I should just adapt to, when proper language support is absolutely within the capabilities of every major tech company. They have the resources. They have the technology. They just don't care enough to use either.

And I'm tired of the generational acceptance, the shrugging "that's just how it is" response. We've normalised being linguistic second-class citizens in our own language. We've accepted that fighting with our tools is just part of using them. We've decided this isn't worth getting worked up about.

Well, I'm worked up about it.

The Part Where I Acknowledge This Doesn't Actually Matter

Look, I'm aware this is a first-world problem. My life isn't meaningfully worse because Microsoft doesn't offer English (England) as an option. I'm not genuinely oppressed by spell-checkers that prefer American spellings. There are vastly more important issues in the world.

But it's the principle of the thing, isn't it? It's the casual erasure, the assumption that American English is universal English, the treatment of the place English comes from as an optional afterthought. It's symbolic of a broader pattern of American tech dominance and cultural homogenisation.

And yes, there's historical irony in England complaining about linguistic imperialism given our own colonial history. I get it. The cognitive dissonance is not lost on me. But two wrongs don't make a right, and more importantly, I'm not responsible for the British Empire's linguistic crimes. I'm just trying to write "colour" without my computer having a breakdown about it.

Where We Actually Are

The reality is this probably won't change meaningfully. The economic incentives point toward continued American dominance in tech, which means continued American English defaults. Most users will continue adapting rather than complaining. Companies will continue not caring enough to fix it properly.

Apple does slightly better than most. Some newer platforms are being designed with better internationalisation from the ground up. Maybe generational change will help as tech becomes more globalised. Maybe.

But probably we'll just keep muddling through, code-switching between variants, fighting with spell-checkers, and occasionally posting screenshots of particularly egregious language menus to complain about them online.

At least we'll always have that one perfect expression of digital-age absurdity: American tech companies offering "English (International)" whilst overlooking England entirely.

Thanks for that, Microsoft. Really.

Cheers.