Set English language in other regions

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Level 1

8 points

Set English language in other regions

When I first installed Snow Leopard, I selected Italy as region but with english language.

As a result, under Language & Text in System Preferences, my region in the Formats was set to "Italy (English)", that is the italian format but with months and days names in english.

I accidentally changed that setting and selected "Italy (Italian)" and now I see months and days names in italian but with system language set to english.

I tried to restore the original setting, but there is no "Italy (English)" option under regions.

I also tried to change in italian the system language and then change it back to english, but the days names are still in italian.

Aside from defining a Custom format, is there a way to restore the "Italy (English)" original setting?

Thank you

MacBook, Mac OS X (10.6.8)

Posted on Apr 15, 2012 12:02 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

aaco

Level 1

15 points

May 13, 2012 9:32 PM in response to Sgab

I had this very same issue today. In my case it was "Brazil (English)" and then it changed to "Brazil (Portuguese)".

This command fixed my problem:

defaults write ~/Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences AppleLocale en_BR

In your case you will want to change the BR part to IT:

defaults write ~/Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences AppleLocale en_IT

Just run it in the Terminal and that might restore it back to "Italy (English)".

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Answer 2

Sgab Author

Level 1

8 points

May 13, 2012 11:27 PM in response to aaco

Thank you aaco for your reply.

Unfortunately the command didn't solve my problem.

In my case, it removed "English" from the list of my system languages and set italian as language and date format.

Maybe (just an idea) there is not an "en_IT" combination to brgin with, so the system set italian globally. I don't know...

Don't worry, id didn't create any problem.

But I thank you again.

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Answer 3

aaco

Level 1

15 points

May 14, 2012 8:15 AM in response to Sgab

Hi again Sgab,

I did try setting it to en_IT here and it's worked as expected. Perhaps it's because we are using different versions of OS X (mine is 10.7.4).

As a last resort, you might want to try setting the system-wide preferences like that (instead of only for your user which the previous command did):

defaults write -g AppleLocale en_IT

Now "defaults read -g AppleLocale" should return en_IT.

Even if that doesn't work, I noticed that it's possible (and possibly it's the only recommended way of doing that) to set an equivalent configuration like that:

In System Preferences -> Language & Text -> Formats:

- In the Regions menu select an English speaking country that has a date/time format you like

- In Currency menu select your currency format

- Also make sure the Measurement units menu is correct

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Answer 4

Sgab Author

Level 1

8 points

May 14, 2012 10:56 AM in response to aaco

Hi again aaco!

This time it worked!

So, really, REALLY THANK YOU!!!!!!

Sgab

PS: if it may be useful to understand why the previous suggestion didn't work, I have OS X 10.6.8.

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