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Which "variant", if any, of your native language do you speak?
Thread poster: Henry Dotterer
Henry Dotterer
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"European Spanish" Nov 6, 2012

Lisa Simpson, MCIL wrote:
"European" Spanish I suppose would have been used simply to differentiate between the language spoken in Spain and any other country that has Spanish as an official language.

Thanks for this, too, Lisa. What do others think? Would "European Spanish" be different from Spanish that is "Standard - Spain" (if such a category existed)?


 
Siegfried Armbruster
Siegfried Armbruster  Identity Verified
Germany
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Latin American Spanish Nov 6, 2012

Henry Dotterer wrote:
Thanks, Lisa. I'd be interested in hearing others' opinions on this one. It is not uncommon for clients to ask for, and translators to offer, "Latin American Spanish".


One of my employees who lived in Argentina for several years keeps telling me that the Spanish in Argentina definitely differs from the Spanish e. g. in Venezuela, Colombia or Peru. I therefore would agree with Lisa that "Latin American" Spanish is an over-generalisation.


 
Anne Diamantidis
Anne Diamantidis  Identity Verified
Germany
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French? Nov 6, 2012

Looking at the demographics page for French, I wonder why "English" and "Dutch" have been entered as variants for French

More seriously, "France, Afrique" was entered - I'd like to hear from French natives colleagues from African countries, I am not sure at all that there is one "African French" variant, it's like saying "European French". I doubt French from Algeria is perfectly equivalent to French from Senegal or Gh
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Looking at the demographics page for French, I wonder why "English" and "Dutch" have been entered as variants for French

More seriously, "France, Afrique" was entered - I'd like to hear from French natives colleagues from African countries, I am not sure at all that there is one "African French" variant, it's like saying "European French". I doubt French from Algeria is perfectly equivalent to French from Senegal or Ghana, for example. What do African colleagues say?

Also, there's "Parisian French" - I was not aware that the press in Paris was using a different language than the press in Marseille or Lyon For the purposes of this (great) future feature, it may be important to clearly specify that we're talking about variants and not dialects (when a dialect is not a variant). The line is thin but real. Alsacian is not a variant of French. It is a regional dialect (same goes for my dialect, which is Occitan, or for Breton, or Provençal...).

Is there any official list (ISO?) with official denominations of variants worldwide?

Thanks Henry for this great idea and the work



[Edited at 2012-11-06 20:47 GMT]
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psicutrinius
psicutrinius  Identity Verified
Spain
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Spanish to English
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Latin American Spanish IS an over-generalisation Nov 6, 2012

I also agree with both Lisa and Siegfried, and would add another additional "flavor": Mexican.

Certainly, the differences are enough as to, at best, being immediately noticed by natives and at worst for making some embarrassing slips through double-meanings.

Of course, there are no problems in terms of understanding each other (and Spaniards as well), but if a text (ex., a marketing or an ad text) is to be localised, it is very advisable to do so for EVERY area.
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I also agree with both Lisa and Siegfried, and would add another additional "flavor": Mexican.

Certainly, the differences are enough as to, at best, being immediately noticed by natives and at worst for making some embarrassing slips through double-meanings.

Of course, there are no problems in terms of understanding each other (and Spaniards as well), but if a text (ex., a marketing or an ad text) is to be localised, it is very advisable to do so for EVERY area.

The point is: "Latin American Spanish" does not exist.
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José Henrique Lamensdorf
José Henrique Lamensdorf  Identity Verified
Brazil
Local time: 07:25
English to Portuguese
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In memoriam
Spanish is a beehive. Any experts? Nov 6, 2012

Siegfried Armbruster wrote:
One of my employees who lived in Argentina for several years keeps telling me that the Spanish in Argentina definitely differs from the Spanish e. g. in Venezuela, Colombia or Peru. I therefore would agree with Lisa that "Latin American" Spanish is an over-generalisation.


I was discussing the Spanish in LatAm variants issue with my elder son, who is not a translator, but an IT professional. He studied and learned Peruvian Spanish to the extent of being taken for a 'local' when he went to Lima. Being a Brazilian, his previous job took him to four Spanish-speaking LatAm countries. His present job requires him to be in daily voice contact with half a dozen such countries, spanning from Mexico to Chile.

He says that the variation among them is not larger than what exists in Portuguese throughout Brazil, with one exception: Argentina, where, in his opinion, the influence of Brazilian Portuguese is strongest. And yet he is not referring to Buenos Aires alone, because his present employer has operations in other provinces there as well.

I had an experience with a software manual I wrote. It was translated in Mexico, where it was intended for. Then an Argentinean reviewer said it was a complete disaster, all wrong. So I got another Mexican reviewer who praised the original job as excellent.

I didn't study Spanish formally, never sat through one single class of it. I learned to speak it "on the fly" while organizing business conferences in Rio, with participants from most LatAm countries. The result is that I speak it so fluently that it amazes me every time I try. Yet my personal way of doing it is such a mix of all variants that people are puzzled, trying to imagine where I came from by the words I use.

So I wonder if among all Prozians we wouldn't find someone well-traveled all over Latin America, perhaps capable of clustering these variants into a few groups, if more than two.



[Edited at 2012-11-06 21:34 GMT]


 
Henry Dotterer
Henry Dotterer
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The case for Latin American Spanish...? Nov 6, 2012

Thanks for the feedback.

It seems clear that the Spanish in Peru, for example, is discernible from the Spanish in Mexico; I have not heard anyone argue otherwise. But the fact that the term "Latin American Spanish" is used (here and elsewhere) may suggest that the concept has at least a practical underpinning.

Let me ask in the following ways:

- Does it make any sense when clients request "Latin American Spanish"? (Or: If you wanted to localize something fo
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Thanks for the feedback.

It seems clear that the Spanish in Peru, for example, is discernible from the Spanish in Mexico; I have not heard anyone argue otherwise. But the fact that the term "Latin American Spanish" is used (here and elsewhere) may suggest that the concept has at least a practical underpinning.

Let me ask in the following ways:

- Does it make any sense when clients request "Latin American Spanish"? (Or: If you wanted to localize something for all or most of Spanish-speaking Latin America, and did not have the budget to localize more than once, what sort of Spanish would you ask for?)

- Does it make any sense for translators to offer "Latin American Spanish"? (And if not, why do they?)

- Is there such a thing as a flavor of Spanish that is not particular to any one area, but that will be largely intelligible across Latin America? A sort of subset of each variant, composed of what is mostly common to most areas?

(I had not read your post, José, when I wrote this.)
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Henry Dotterer
Henry Dotterer
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Thanks, Anne! Nov 6, 2012

Anne Diamantidis wrote:
Also, there's "Parisian French" - I was not aware that the press in Paris was using a different language than the press in Marseille or Lyon...

This is a good point. There is such a thing as a variation in accent that would not rise to the level of a language variant as suits our purposes here. To take an example from my locale, a person from Brooklyn sounds quite different from a person from New York's "North Country", but I can't think of an instance in which we would want to differentiate between the two for ProZ.com purposes. (ie. In the jobs system, KudoZ, contests, etc.)
Is there any official list (ISO?) with official denominations of variants worldwide?

If there is a good list of pure variants, we have not found it. (Anyone know of one?) The common approach is to differentiate by region, without particular combinations of language and region having been "validated" by any body. (So just as I can express French as it is spoken in France as FR-FR, and English in the US as EN-US, according to the standards, I could write "JP-IT" and that would mean Japanese as it is spoken in Italy -- which, as far as I know, would not be a particularly useful formulation.)

There is a "standards" type of registry of languages that are not easily described by the standardized language/region approach. But it is primarily for the unusual situations, and doesn't include the variants that people are entering here.
Thanks Henry for this great idea and the work

Thank you, Anne!


 
Strastran (X)
Strastran (X)
France
Local time: 11:25
French to English
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Alsacien Nov 6, 2012

Anne Diamantidis wrote:

Alsacian is not a variant of French. It is a regional dialect (same goes for my dialect, which is Occitan, or for Breton, or Provençal...).


Indeed, Alsacien isn't even remotely close to French, it's more related to German. Is it shown as a variant of French?


 
Alexander C. Thomson
Alexander C. Thomson  Identity Verified
Netherlands
Local time: 11:25
Dutch to English
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So İstanbul Turkish doesn’t distinguish within ‘Türkei-Türkisch’ Nov 7, 2012

Henry Dotterer wrote:

Well, in addition to the ProZ.com users who saw fit to use that description, Wikipedia says "Turkish, also referred to as Istanbul Turkish or Anatolian Turkish, is the most populous of the Turkic languages..."



— Aha. So if it’s being used by ProZ members the same way, then it seems they’re not stating their variant of the language known to the (layman in the) outside world as ‘Turkish’ (i.e., the language of Turkey), but rather pointing out that their form of Turkic is not Azeri or Turkmen or Gagauz or Uyghur but rather the language of Turkey (there’s no elegant unambiguous name for that in English but the German term ‘Türkei-Türkisch’ is sometimes used).


 
Anne Diamantidis
Anne Diamantidis  Identity Verified
Germany
Local time: 11:25
German to French
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@Henry and Patrick Nov 7, 2012

Patrick Stenson wrote:

Indeed, Alsacien isn't even remotely close to French, it's more related to German. Is it shown as a variant of French?


No, nobody entered it as a variant, sorry I may have not expressed myself clearly - I used Alsacien as an example to differentiate between a dialect /regional language and a variant - see below

Henry Dotterer wrote:

Anne Diamantidis wrote:
Also, there's "Parisian French" - I was not aware that the press in Paris was using a different language than the press in Marseille or Lyon For the purposes of this (great) future feature, it may be important to clearly specify that we're talking about variants and not dialects (when a dialect is not a variant). The line is thin but real. Alsacian is not a variant of French. It is a regional dialect (same goes for my dialect, which is Occitan, or for Breton, or Provençal...).

This is a good point. There is such a thing as a variation in accent that would not rise to the level of a language variant as suits our purposes here.


Sorry, I may have been confusing. Seeing that someone entered Parisian French as a variant for French brought me to thinking about dialects vs. variants - I'm not talking here about differences and variations in accents, I'm talking here about real dialects that we have in France (it's the example i know best, but it's probably the case in many other countries). It's historical: in France there are many regional languages that are, if I may say so for the sake of clarity, separated languages that no French man would understand unless they are from that region, and these dialects are no variants of anything, they are, well, regional languages - for example Alsacien, which is not a variant of French, or Breton (French people who did not learn Breton don't understand a single word of it), or Occitan, etc.

The reason why I mentioned those is because it occurred to me that some people might feel confused and might enter a dialect as a "variant" in their profiles, while in the present case, those are no variants at all. In France, there are a lot of dialects (variations in accents, local specificities and a few actual, complete different regional languages) but to my knowledge there is no variant other than France French (before the rest of the francophone world jumps at my throat, I said "In France").

Henry Dotterer wrote:

To take an example from my locale, a person from Brooklyn sounds quite different from a person from New York's "North Country", but I can't think of an instance in which we would want to differentiate between the two for ProZ.com purposes. (ie. In the jobs system, KudoZ, contests, etc.)

Exactly, which is why I reacted to the "Parisian French" - entering "Parisian French" does not make sense, because it is not a variant of French, it's a minor variation from the variant France French - to take your example Henry, entering as a variant in your profile "Parisian French" or "Lille French" or "Lyon French" would exactly be like entering "Brooklyn English".

For our purposes here, this makes no sense - as an outsourcer, I don't need a text translated into Parisian French, I need a text translated into France French because it is for the French market, or I need it translated into Swiss French because it's for the Swiss market, or into Québec French because it's for the Canadian market.

And if a client of mine needs a text translated into Breton, which is a language of its own, then I'll go look for a translator who masters this language, but I won't go look in the directory under "French> variant:Breton" because Breton is not a variant.

Again, I'm sorry if I did not make myself clearer in the first post - my point was, we need to keep things as simple as possible (variants of language worldwide are complicated and fascinating enough as it is) by making sure that the difference between a dialect and a variant remains clear and that we're talking here about variants that are needed for business and for translation, and to prevent people from entering local variations or dialects into their profiles as a variant ("Brooklyn English").

As Siegfried rightly pointed out earlier, it's not about what translators are (French from France, Spanish from Spain, German from Germany), its about what they can - you may be Argentine, you can translate into Argentinean Spanish but you've been living for 20 years in Spain and can just as well translate into Spain Spanish, well it's all we need to know as an outsourcer if we need a text for the Spanish market.



[Edited at 2012-11-07 09:00 GMT]


 
XXXphxxx (X)
XXXphxxx (X)  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 10:25
Portuguese to English
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Latin America Nov 7, 2012

Henry Dotterer wrote:

Let me ask in the following ways:

- Does it make any sense when clients request "Latin American Spanish"? (Or: If you wanted to localize something for all or most of Spanish-speaking Latin America, and did not have the budget to localize more than once, what sort of Spanish would you ask for?)

- Does it make any sense for translators to offer "Latin American Spanish"? (And if not, why do they?)

- Is there such a thing as a flavor of Spanish that is not particular to any one area, but that will be largely intelligible across Latin America? A sort of subset of each variant, composed of what is mostly common to most areas?



FWIW, a dictionary would tend to use the following 5 categories: Andes, Central America, Caribbean, Mexico and Southern Cone. There are of course sub-sets within those. Whether there is a written standard acceptable across the continent I'll leave to our Latin American colleagues to answer - my Spanish is of the "European" variant.


 
psicutrinius
psicutrinius  Identity Verified
Spain
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Member (2008)
Spanish to English
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Spanish variants - adapting Anne's ideas for French Nov 7, 2012

1) We have four languages in Spain: Castilian (aka Spanish, which is the "lingua franca"), Basque, Catalan and Galician.

2) These are different languages and need to be treated as separate languages (no Spanish Galician, or Spanish Basque or Spanish Catalan (among other reasons because, in the case of the latter two, they are spoken up north in France, in the immediate vicinity of the border, that is, they have their own areas).

3) As for variants of the Spanish ("casti
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1) We have four languages in Spain: Castilian (aka Spanish, which is the "lingua franca"), Basque, Catalan and Galician.

2) These are different languages and need to be treated as separate languages (no Spanish Galician, or Spanish Basque or Spanish Catalan (among other reasons because, in the case of the latter two, they are spoken up north in France, in the immediate vicinity of the border, that is, they have their own areas).

3) As for variants of the Spanish ("castilian") itself, I am afraid there are as many as Latin American countries, and that the same flavors (and double-meaning words) will appear among them all. Therefore,

(a) there is no such thing as a "Latin American Spanish" common throughout America, (b) Nevertheless, even if a native of a country will immediately spot the speaker from another, they will understand each other without difficulties.

That puts the differences in the same perspective as Anne's "parisian French", Lille French", etc (although differences are more marked).

There is also the "Spanglish", which is another matter, but which I would not take into account here.

Bottom lines:

(A) There is not a Latin American Spanish.

(B) Some types of texts may require translation localized BY COUNTRY (say, for instance, marketing and, especially, advertising texts), specifically due to sometimes quite embarrassing double meanings.

I have heard about "neutral" Spanish. Supposedly, this should be a, let's say "synthetic variant" which would be useable without constraints and misunderstandings across the whole Spanish speaking area. But have no idea about that.
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Strastran (X)
Strastran (X)
France
Local time: 11:25
French to English
+ ...
I see Nov 7, 2012

Anne Diamantidis wrote:

Patrick Stenson wrote:

Indeed, Alsacien isn't even remotely close to French, it's more related to German. Is it shown as a variant of French?


No, nobody entered it as a variant, sorry I may have not expressed myself clearly - I used Alsacien as an example to differentiate between a dialect /regional language and a variant - see below

Henry Dotterer wrote:

Anne Diamantidis wrote:
Also, there's "Parisian French" - I was not aware that the press in Paris was using a different language than the press in Marseille or Lyon For the purposes of this (great) future feature, it may be important to clearly specify that we're talking about variants and not dialects (when a dialect is not a variant). The line is thin but real. Alsacian is not a variant of French. It is a regional dialect (same goes for my dialect, which is Occitan, or for Breton, or Provençal...).

This is a good point. There is such a thing as a variation in accent that would not rise to the level of a language variant as suits our purposes here.


Sorry, I may have been confusing. Seeing that someone entered Parisian French as a variant for French brought me to thinking about dialects vs. variants - I'm not talking here about differences and variations in accents, I'm talking here about real dialects that we have in France (it's the example i know best, but it's probably the case in many other countries). It's historical: in France there are many regional languages that are, if I may say so for the sake of clarity, separated languages that no French man would understand unless they are from that region, and these dialects are no variants of anything, they are, well, regional languages - for example Alsacien, which is not a variant of French, or Breton (French people who did not learn Breton don't understand a single word of it), or Occitan, etc.

The reason why I mentioned those is because it occurred to me that some people might feel confused and might enter a dialect as a "variant" in their profiles, while in the present case, those are no variants at all. In France, there are a lot of dialects (variations in accents, local specificities and a few actual, complete different regional languages) but to my knowledge there is no variant other than France French (before the rest of the francophone world jumps at my throat, I said "In France").

Henry Dotterer wrote:

To take an example from my locale, a person from Brooklyn sounds quite different from a person from New York's "North Country", but I can't think of an instance in which we would want to differentiate between the two for ProZ.com purposes. (ie. In the jobs system, KudoZ, contests, etc.)

Exactly, which is why I reacted to the "Parisian French" - entering "Parisian French" does not make sense, because it is not a variant of French, it's a minor variation from the variant France French - to take your example Henry, entering as a variant in your profile "Parisian French" or "Lille French" or "Lyon French" would exactly be like entering "Brooklyn English".

For our purposes here, this makes no sense - as an outsourcer, I don't need a text translated into Parisian French, I need a text translated into France French because it is for the French market, or I need it translated into Swiss French because it's for the Swiss market, or into Québec French because it's for the Canadian market.

And if a client of mine needs a text translated into Breton, which is a language of its own, then I'll go look for a translator who masters this language, but I won't go look in the directory under "French> variant:Breton" because Breton is not a variant.

Again, I'm sorry if I did not make myself clearer in the first post - my point was, we need to keep things as simple as possible (variants of language worldwide are complicated and fascinating enough as it is) by making sure that the difference between a dialect and a variant remains clear and that we're talking here about variants that are needed for business and for translation, and to prevent people from entering local variations or dialects into their profiles as a variant ("Brooklyn English").

As Siegfried rightly pointed out earlier, it's not about what translators are (French from France, Spanish from Spain, German from Germany), its about what they can - you may be Argentine, you can translate into Argentinean Spanish but you've been living for 20 years in Spain and can just as well translate into Spain Spanish, well it's all we need to know as an outsourcer if we need a text for the Spanish market.



[Edited at 2012-11-07 09:00 GMT]


My mistake, sorry. I see what you mean.


 
Catherine GUILLIAUMET
Catherine GUILLIAUMET  Identity Verified
Local time: 11:25
English to French
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In memoriam
French : Let's simplify :-) Nov 7, 2012

Hi,

I totally agree with Anne.

But, let's try to simplify

1) Here, we are discussing about translation = written language, not about interpretation = spoken language,
2) so, there is only one French language used in France.

3) AFA the translating profession and foreign variants of written French are concerned, there's a sort of hierarchy of diff
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Hi,

I totally agree with Anne.

But, let's try to simplify

1) Here, we are discussing about translation = written language, not about interpretation = spoken language,
2) so, there is only one French language used in France.

3) AFA the translating profession and foreign variants of written French are concerned, there's a sort of hierarchy of differences, depending mostly on the specialization domain.

A) General texts :
Big differences : between European French and Quebec French
Very minor or no differences : between the 4 European natively French-speaking countries : Belgium, Luxemburg, Swiss and France.

Consequences : IMHO, general documents can be translated into Quebec French only by Quebec translators, while translators from any of the other four countries can translate them if the target is one (or all) of the other 3 European countries.

B) Specialities :
(please note that I can have an informed advice only on the specialities I know best, i.e. medicine and pharmacy)

Very big differences : between Quebec and the 4 European countries
Big differences : between France and Switzerland, particularly as far as pharmacy is concerned.
Minor differences : between France and Belgium/Luxemburg.

Consequences :
I) in the "any foreign language > Quebec or Swiss French" direction : only native Swiss or Quebec translators can do the job, particularly if pharmaceuticals are implied and if your primary concern is the quality of your translation. (if you have doubts about Switzerland specificity, you just have to have a look at the French version of SPCs in the "Swiss Compendium of Medicines").

II) from any foreign language into Belgium and Luxemburg French : any French or French-speaking Belgian or Luxemburger translator can do it. The help of an editor living in the target country may be useful, however, just to check for those minor differences.

I suppose that for translation dealing with Law, for instance, differences will be more acute and more country-specific.

About Luxemburg, I recently translated a document dealing with clinical trials standards. I didn't meet any particular difficulty and my client was very happy with my translation because, for some specific terms like "ethics committee", that is called "comité de protection des personnes (CPP)" in France, I made the (reasonable) effort to check for its official equivalent in Luxemburg, i.e. : "comité d'éthique de recherche". Not difficult at all : I just checked the part of the "Memorial" (Luxemburg's Official Journal) containing the legislation related to healthcare. This way, my client had not to spend time in substituting the rare typical Lux. terms for the French ones.

Internet is of great help for ironing out those minor differences.

One thing that always makes me laugh : when clients (mainly US clients) ask for "international French". What's this beast ?

I hope that this will be of some help to make clearer that variants are an endless story, since it depends on the type of work, the specialization, the target public, etc. But I appreciate the efforts made by Henry who tries to disentangle the complexity of languages and ... of colleagues (including me)

Have a great day
Catherine








[Edited at 2012-11-07 12:56 GMT]
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Emma Goldsmith
Emma Goldsmith  Identity Verified
Spain
Local time: 11:25
Member (2004)
Spanish to English
filtering by language variant Nov 7, 2012

If the purpose of adding a language variant to our profiles is so that an outsourcer can filter by it, please make sure that we are not excluded from wider searches. In my case, for example, if someone searches for English (in general), and I have stated UK English as my variant, I should still appear in search results.

I mention this because a few months ago an outsourcer specified MS Word as a requirement for a job, and I was unable to quote because I only had MS Office specified
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If the purpose of adding a language variant to our profiles is so that an outsourcer can filter by it, please make sure that we are not excluded from wider searches. In my case, for example, if someone searches for English (in general), and I have stated UK English as my variant, I should still appear in search results.

I mention this because a few months ago an outsourcer specified MS Word as a requirement for a job, and I was unable to quote because I only had MS Office specified in my profile! I have now entered both, and as a result it looks as if I don't have a clue about what MS Office is.
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Which "variant", if any, of your native language do you speak?






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