Blog: why I mostly use Finnish localization

[Mikaela]

This is a bit silly to write in English, but who cares, no one who supports Finnish language asks me that, only those who either don't speak Finnish or who want to kill Finnish and replace it with English as the only language in the world do.

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Why would I use my phone or anything else in English?

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English is neither my native language or universal. English is also difficult to speak (while typing may be ok). I don't support English supremacy over our beautiful language.

Finnish exists and there is demand for it.

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KISS Launcher has Finnish localisation since I started it due to it not existing and OEM launchers being traditionally bad.

I opened https://github.com/GrapheneOS/PdfViewer/issues/377 because my family complains about the app not using Finnish and I said I would see what I can do.

FluffyChat has Finnish localisation since @Sorunome talked me into it and I actually appreciate our language

Nheko has Finnish localisation since I happen to use it and there is an active Matrix community in Finnish

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And I am still betting on Tor not being widely used in Finland due to it not having Finnish localisation, but I am just one person with my own problems and I cannot fix and maintain everything by myself even if I am in the very small minority of FOSS people who value all languages and don't want everyone to just learn English

[Mikaela]

Where I don't use Finnish localization:

• root / user 0. That is enforced in English, because of more technical context that I am more likely to have to discuss with someone in English than Finnish and it's just easier when cooperating in sysadmin context that everyone speaks the same language, time format, and timezone.
  • https://github.com/Mikaela/shell-things/blob/cxefa/etc/profile.d/00-root-en.sh / https://m.xkcd.com/1179/ / https://www.timeanddate.com/time/aboututc.html
• Some places just have incomprehensible Finnish localization, although TODO is thinking an example for this.
  • I have vague impression of router web panels inventing their own words.
  • Do you know webauthn / passkeys.io ? Is it perhaps a secure key, security key, authentication key, passkey, or something else entirely?
• YouTube Music requires "English (Finland)" to use Finnish units and display English titles for JRPG soundtracks instead of only Japanese that I cannot read and if I had all the time in the world to learn it, I would also be fixing the Finnish localisations mentioned before.

What apps should do instead? Both Android and iOS have integrated per-language switches, please support that. If you are Flutter, please see flutter/flutter#109842