"international English" Does Not Exist, And Certainly Isn't Us English

The claim was made on the Q&A livestream that for the sake of non-native English speakers, TSW3 will solely use US English (with little elaboration on what that means - will we sit in the "engineer's seat" on British trains?) because that is "International English". The problem is that if you actually look up "International English", you won't find anything saying that US English is accepted as any sort of worldwide "International English".

 

oh please no,

have enough of that on facebook, where english words mean something totally different to americans... and we get in trouble for using them, in a local group (i.e full of people who live within a certain town, where we all speak 'english')

This is going to be a bit LOVE for the German content, having to use us english.

 

I like having "british english" on the british routes, it makes out for a more real experience when I play on british routes.
However, the US english could definitely be called "international english" since it's the main language used in 99% of social platforms, the american popular culture is without a doubt a big influence all over the world. In my country both british and american english is now allowed in both spoken and written english in schools.
I understand especially british people reacting to this since it's originally your language, and imo british is a beautiful language while american is just boring and flat in comparison (no offfence) .
But the fact is that american english is leading, so maybe it's just natural that it's used in games to..linguistic evolution.

 

Oh grow up. They had to standardize on a form of English and chose the most widespread one. Get over it.

 

When I'm working a British train, I'm a driver.
On an American loco I'm an "engineer".
If they want to spell centre as center that's one thing, but they should keep to the correct national names and phrases for each country.
More daftness from Dovetail.

 

There’s no real issue with it being US English. I asked it as the first question on the question thread as a joke. If it hadn’t been the first question I wouldn’t have even posted it. The battle was lost many years before the Training Whatsit.

 

I agree there no such things a International English but go to the original. If this game was made in America fair enough but its made in the UK so sound be uk English

 

The thing i am worried about is it sounds like localisation could be removed, the very stuff that helps with immersion.

years ago a game was being made based on an american subway, and the developers were asking on a forum i was on for German speaking people to do spoken translations of the station stops etc, for the version of the game sold to the German market....

people said that's kinda daft, you play a train driving sim to pretend you are there, some people would want to play for nostalgia, to remember a holiday where they rode on that subway etc.

you don't expect to hear: 'der nächste halt ist nein und fünfzigsten straße, bitte aussteigen in fahrtrichtung links' in an american train, being driven in an american city, by americans.


I know this is about the spelling of 'centre' in the 'training centre' sign. but how far will it go, do we from now on take a class 47 with 20 oil tankers over the pennines to the depot, then fill them with gasoline?

 

Can they just call it Training Centrer so everyone can have the R where they want it?

 

No, because then we wouldn’t be able to make 50 threads about this nonsense.

 

redrev1917 That map isn't correct, it pictures Norway ( where I'm from ) in blue, which means our schools teach british english, that simply isn't correct, both variants is considered equals here. So with that in mind, how can one be sure this isn't true for more countries ?

 

The really sensible option would be to rephrase it so British/American differences don't come up, by naming it "Driving School" for instance.

 

As an American, I approve of DTG doing this

 

Wow, we’ve found something you approve of at last

 

It was a joke. Frankly I'd prefer if they just made the British happy and put centre but I guess it ain't that big of a deal (Really isn't a big deal to be honest)

 

I know, so was my reply

 

Cant we all just view English as English that has it's variations. I'd assume there are different variations of the german language just like there are different variations of the Spanish language. Center and Centre are the same thing. It's not big deal

 

It's not about that, it's about the claim that the entire game will be in American English.

 

You could argue that Australia teaches Australian English, which whilst it is mostly the same to British it does have some differences.

 

It is the same in Spain (also in blue in the map).

 

Well USA is the current superpower, so it tends to dictate a lot of cultural things like spelling and pronounciation, and being able to call it "International English".

I'm sure we will get a localisation mod to address this for those bothered by it.

As for DTG shamelessly using a British Railways heritage font with US spelling, it is just disrespectful/ignorant of the history behind it.

 

I'm sure Canadian English also has differences, eh?

May I suggest Latin, e.g. "Centrum Disciplina". It's neutral and also sounds fancier.

 

So fancy. DTG should use it

 

Perhaps it should be in old english then at this point

 

Esperanto perhaps?

 

Just use a picture book at this rate.....

 

Have a heart. Do you really expect them to use two versions of English? They've got enough on their plate. Just use one or the other. I understand both. Though I do like to hear German on German trains, even though I don't speak a word of " Deutsch ".

" Taught " maybe. Spoken ? That's another thing.
I like to watch British TV and I hear a lot of American speech, albeit in English accents. It's rather amusing, old chap.

 

Glad we’ve found a new topic to be excited about.
Can’t wait for Dtg English Classic being upgraded to Dtg English 2.
Must pre-order now for the discount.

 

Pathetic topic to be in arms about imo.

 

As a non-native speaker, this is nonsense. It is not what you're taught, it is what kind of content you consume. You pick the majority of phares, and general language usage from actually listening to english, and in the wast majority that is US English.

Also... we don't really care, tire/tyre, color/colour, analyse/analyze, defence/defense... we don't really care, and usually intermix it... And most of the more nuances like engineer/driver are totally lost on us.... Soo, keep fighting your fight, just don't assume that majority of the blue world actually cares

 

As a Norwegian I have to say that I am more partial to US-English than UK-English, even though we learn both in Norwegian schools. Though even in schools it tend to lean more towards the US-English due to it's more widespread use, and students are made aware of the differences that may occur if they run into UK-English.

I understand both perfectly fine, and I understand the differences. I honestly don't care if you call it a truck or a lorry, sidewalk or pavement, or hood, bonnet, boot or a trunk. Aluminum or aluminium, center or centre, it makes no real difference. I know what the variations mean. Consequently I'm not bothered if it's spelled Centre or Center. I still grasp its intended meaning.

So why am I partial to US-English then?

Because US-English is far more dominant on social media platforms, in general on the internet, certainly so in popular media such as movies. It's simply more widespread which means it's what you come to expect to see, read or hear in most situations. To be honest anytime UK-English being used my first reaction is "that's different and kinda novel". Because it's NOT what you expect in the majority of cases on the internet, social media or gaming.

By all means, if there is a voice announcer on a train like the TPWS announcer on the Rush Hour train when you start it up, then that can be in a local language. Likewise with the German voice annunciations in German trains. But that's really up to the developer of the specific train, yeah?

However, that all said, I'm not much bothered if it's UK or US English. Just as long as either one available and used so I can understand it.

 

Surely if it's this big of an issue a modder can flip 2 letters...

*cough cough* any modders around?

 

There is only one English, the clue is in the name.

Our American friends spell, and pronounce, certain words incorrectly which is their right, but that doesn’t constitute a new language.

(For the avoidance of doubt, the above is tongue-in-cheek)

This sounds to me like yet another British company doing down their own country. It’s all part of this nonsense ‘woke’ agenda that DTG seem to be all in on. Why on Earth would this even cross their minds to make into a thing? It’s just ridiculous.

 

It is also irrelevant because it includes countries where the game is already localised into the local language so far less likely anyone would be needing to play in English (The game is localised into Simplified Chinese, Russian, German, Spanish, French). But there always has to be a conspiracy, DTG secretly trying to undermine the Queen or something, it's par for the course with this forum, a helpful addition for some players at no real inconvenience to anyone else? No! It's evil/incompentent/woke.

Frankly, looking at the very familiar line up of detractors, DTG are once again annoying all the right people. Progress!

 

Don't care how they spell centre / center but a driver should be a driver, an engineer should be an engineer, a lift should be a lift and an elevator an elevator... In the end people will be able to understand it either way, and unless we're starting down the route of being grammar police, this is kind of pointless. We see enough grammar, punctuation and spelling mistakes on this forum that there aren't many who should be picking holes in others...

Woke refers to social injustice. I doubt anyone is being physically, mentally or morally harmed by having the r "in the wrong place" any more than they would dropping a u from a word... I mean most of the british drop H and T out of a lot of words themselves so haven't really got the "linguistic moral high ground"

 

In this case it would be a thing, because they're not necessarily going to be changing the sign on the training building for each territory

 

Bloody me! Witness the fall of Britannia and its consequences. Hold yourself together, mate.

Cheers

 

dtg going to regret that move. We will be giving them headaches with us complaining lol .

 

I completely disagree. This agenda involves the denouncing of everything British, and anything that is historically British. It is going on every day, right before our very eyes and involves the determined re-writing of history in our schools and Universities. Again, I ask, why did this even cross their minds? Have they been inundated with complaints that people didn’t understand English? I highly doubt it.

Colour is good. Difference is good. I don’t know when you last watched a child play with playdough, but you’ll see them take all these lovely colours and mix it together into one big, ugly, colourless useless mess. Slowly but surely, bit by bit, this is happening in Britain and this is just another example of it. Yes it’s small, and yes you get the ‘what a silly thing to be annoyed by’ brigade (you can see examples of this in this very thread), but when you start to put all of these little things together it starts to add up into something big.

There was a story that broke yesterday in the British press that highlights just how dangerous all of this nonsense is. I’m not putting it here because it’s off topic, bit that should be ringing alarm bells as to the sort of social engineering that is going on, and what all of these seemingly small things can add up to.

 

Not to rain on your parade here, but US-English is actually more historically English than your current UK-English.

So if your argument is that the "correct" English is the original English from a historical perspective then you are actually being pro-US-English in this case.

As seen in this article from your very own BBC:
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20180207-how-americans-preserved-british-english

 

Ah, the BBC. They are at the absolute spearhead of exactly what I’m talking about. The sooner that organisation is consigned to the history books the better off we’d all be.

 

I think your chauvinism is blinding you. The culture war is all circus and you ought to look past it to see what hides behind the curtains.

N.B. I hope your play dough analogy is not hinting towards Great Replacement fear as was my initial impression.

Cheers

 

Well, I'm not really advocating the BBC in any way. What they are discussing in this article is not BBC opinions. It's built on linguistic history which shows that current US-English is closer to the historical British-English than todays current UK-English.

You can look it up and find a number of other non-BBC sites with the same information as it pertains to the linguistic differences between the US and contemporary UK, and how linguistically the US are closer to the historic form of British.

At the end of the day your language in the UK has changed away from the former British and to a more modernized version of it while the US on their end kept the "proper" English in a much larger degree.

At least as far as the written form goes. The variations in their dialects from state to state, and even county to county, is a whole other matter entirely.

 

Play the ball, not the man. You don’t know anything about me and have never met me, so don’t start slighting me with things you know nothing of. Ok?

 

It probably is not recognised as international English. But lots of people around the world learn their English from US movies. To me US English is more common than UK English even when the UK is practically our neighbour. To be fair English is just very bad French

That map shown where entire map of Europe is UK English is incorrect. English is not an official language in Belgium. The only place where you will find English in our country is on TV and cinema. There is way more US content than UK content so Belgium should be red on that map

 

Does it really matter? We're all literate enough to understand what "center" means so as long as nothing is lost in translation who cares?

This just feels like another excuse to criticise DTG generally. There are a lot more things that are more worthy of backlash than something as trivial as this. I doubt most players will even notice the difference when playing.

I'm a Brit, and while I would certainly like the option of British English it's absence doesn't really bother me.

 

Oh wow... #shotsfired on that one. I know a Parisian who would completely agree with you haha.

I'm in the same page as you on this one. Most people outside the US and UK (and likely many even within both the US and UK) end up using the specific UK and US terms, written forms and such mixed together. Sometimes you write color and another time you might write colour. As far as communicating goes it makes no difference as both are understood by those who need to understand it.

However, I can understand that DTG want to go for one specific style of writing so it looks less haphazard when they are writing articles, statements or whatever text goes into their game as well. If it is a big mixed bag of both US and UK English variations of words then it just looks unprofessional. So I get where they are coming from.

But for us as the end users it really doesn't matter. Even less so for those of us who don't have English as a first language, whether it is US or UK variants. As long as we understand it we don't care much what the written form is like.

 

Which is my point entirely.

Where are the TSW players complaining to DTG because something is spelt ‘centre’ instead of ‘center’? I’d bet they don’t exist. Virtually no one, least of all non-native English speakers, would likely see a difference.

So I’d ask again why do it? What possible reason could DTG have for making this change?

My first point about the clue being in the name was tongue-in-cheek and to be absolutely honest it doesn’t really bother me either way. My annoyance isn’t even about DTG, it’s the fact that for no obvious reason a British company has chosen to cast their own native language aside in favour of one from another country. Can you imagine how the French would react to that, or the Germans, Spanish, Chinese etc? Me neither, because they are proud of their languages and so they should be. There is unfortunately a movement in the UK to denounce anything and everything that made Britain British, to cast aspersions on previous generations for any perceived slight against this twisted modern morality. I see this illogical change as yet another example of it, and it annoys me. That’s my opinion, you don’t have to agree with it of course, but it is what it is.

 

No, it's quite clearly still in English.

Cheers

 

I don't know why they did it but it sounds very logical to choose one language. Not sure if if you get bugs when you use both but the software DTG is using is from US so I suppose using the language that you software uses makes a lot of sense.