I'm talking more about the behavior of websites or applications.
For example, I'm on macOS. I want the OS GUI to be in English and to use the US keyboard layout, because I'm used to that and buttons/labels aren't a big deal anyway.
However, most of my communication with my coworkers (for example, MS Teams) happens in Italian, so I'd prefer those programs to display their UI in Italian (so that everyone using the program would be on the same page) and to have Italian spellcheck.
When I open Safari to look at docs, Wikipedia or search results, I want those in English. But e-commerce sites like Amazon need to be in Italian. Except if I'm shopping for technical books or manuals: I need those in English.
For some of those needs there's a workaround, some I found completely impossible to solve (I can't seem to get the spellchecker to switch reliably, my solution is simply to disable it: I make zero grammar mistakes in Italian and most people are willing to put up with my broken English).
Generally speaking, I find that most UIs are downright hostile to "mixed" needs like mine, and I end up defaulting to the US/English locale everywhere because it's the least broken (except for units of measurement. Come on guys, inches? Farhenheit?)
The concept of locale itself is broken and wrong: I want it.IT or en.US contextually, neither is the correct one, why should I be asked to definitively pick either? In many cases, localization is downright harmful. Excel comes to mind, but even several ETL tools "helpfully" "translate" decimal points to commas by default!
Websites could greatly benefit from this, e.g. social media, where you're likely to be part of both a local community that speaks your native language, and a global community that speaks English.
Ah ok, I agree and I have some of the same issues. I'm using Firefox and the spellchecker works well. I regularly switch between 3 languages. Same for Thunderbird, plus there is an extension that remembers which language I'm using with a specific contact, which is great.
Regarding the en-US locale, I've read that some people use the en-CA locale instead, this way you get (partly) American spelling, but with metric units and international standards like A4 paper size and reasonable date format.
You can set per-application language settings in macOS. Go to System Preferences -> Language & Region -> Apps. Click the + button to add an app then choose the language you want.
You can also do this in iOS and iPadOS. Go to Settings, scroll down to the bottom where your app is listed, tap on its settings, then click on Language.
For example, I'm on macOS. I want the OS GUI to be in English and to use the US keyboard layout, because I'm used to that and buttons/labels aren't a big deal anyway.
However, most of my communication with my coworkers (for example, MS Teams) happens in Italian, so I'd prefer those programs to display their UI in Italian (so that everyone using the program would be on the same page) and to have Italian spellcheck.
When I open Safari to look at docs, Wikipedia or search results, I want those in English. But e-commerce sites like Amazon need to be in Italian. Except if I'm shopping for technical books or manuals: I need those in English.
For some of those needs there's a workaround, some I found completely impossible to solve (I can't seem to get the spellchecker to switch reliably, my solution is simply to disable it: I make zero grammar mistakes in Italian and most people are willing to put up with my broken English).
Generally speaking, I find that most UIs are downright hostile to "mixed" needs like mine, and I end up defaulting to the US/English locale everywhere because it's the least broken (except for units of measurement. Come on guys, inches? Farhenheit?)
The concept of locale itself is broken and wrong: I want it.IT or en.US contextually, neither is the correct one, why should I be asked to definitively pick either? In many cases, localization is downright harmful. Excel comes to mind, but even several ETL tools "helpfully" "translate" decimal points to commas by default!
Websites could greatly benefit from this, e.g. social media, where you're likely to be part of both a local community that speaks your native language, and a global community that speaks English.