Belgian formats when choosing US language - regional & language settings issue
I have chosen to use English (United States) as system language. I'm in Belgium so I still want to use Belgian formats for dates, numbers and amounts. However, the only choice I have is German Belgian formats which means dates are shown in German in stead of Belgian/English format.
Belgium has 3 official languages (Dutch +-60%, French +-40% and German <1%) -> so it's weird to default to de_BE as format ideally it should be en_BE or if not possible nl_BE or fr_BE and all xx_BE formats should be possible to choose.
Date is now shown as: Dez 12 (Dezember is German). I want the date to be shown as Dec 12 (English format or if not possible then I'd like to use Dutch format for the date).
When searching for Belg... formats there is only Belgien (German for Belgium) there is no English, Dutch nor French option for Belgian formats
A workaround is to install extra languages (French and/or Dutch) which requires extra locale software to be installed. In that case it is possible to select French and Dutch language Belgian formats - it's however still not possible to select English-Belgian formats.
-> remaining issues
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When just US English is installed -> only German Belgian formats are available to select - others should be selectable and German is not a good default: it should be English, Dutch or French (defaulting to French or Dutch may be politically sensitive in Belgium :-|)
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Even with English, French and Dutch languages installed, it's still not possible to select English-Belgian formats.
The typical installation does not include regional formats.
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Go to Settings -> Region & Language -> Manage installed languages -> Install
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Then: Install/Remove languages -> Dutch. In Regional formats, select Nederlands (België)
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Logout and login.
Your calendar should be in Dutch.
The locale used for regional formats is determined (aka guessed) by the installer based on the time zone location. Normally that leads to the right thing.
In case of Belgium with multiple important languages there is an ambiguity. I think it picks German simply because it comes first when sorted alphabetically:
$ cat /usr/share/i18n/SUPPORTED | grep _BE | grep UTF-8
de_BE.UTF-8 UTF-8
fr_BE.UTF-8 UTF-8
li_BE UTF-8
nl_BE.UTF-8 UTF-8
wa_BE.UTF-8 UTF-8
To make the installer pick some other language, it would be possible, at least technically, to add BE to this list.
The reason why it's not there already may be political. If you would pick nl as the default language, the French speaking folks might be unhappy and vice versa.
Anyway, to have it considered by the developers, you may want to file a ubiquity bug report:
ubuntu-bug ubiquity
One way to have the month and weekday names in English is to open the ~/.profile file for editing and add this line:
export LC_TIME=en_DK.UTF-8
And then relogin.
The en_DK locale is not so much a Danish locale, but rather a locale for ISO aware European users who prefer English as the display language.