Forum Discussion
Solved
How do I remove "English (United Kingdom)"?
Hello Internet,
If you're reading this message, it means I have given up or I am close to giving up on this Windows problem. I have a recently installed Windows 10 (build 19043.1110) here on my PC with the following two... languages?... (I will play along and pretend for a minute that I'm a complete idiot and I don't know what constitutes a language or a Windows locale).
- English (United States)
- English (United Kingdom)
These "languages" are accessible from the system tray. My keyboard is Swedish. Both of these two "languages" are set to use "Swedish keyboard". So if I use the hotkey Win+Space I am merely entertaining myself, it's not doing anything useful, it just switches my keyboard layout from Swedish to Swedish and back to Swedish again.
If I really feel like entertaining myself in this way, I can even do so explicitly using the hotkey Alt+Shift. The "Input Switch Notification" knows this.
"Typing Left Alt + Shift changes your input language. You can turn this feature off or change your hot key [sic] sequence by selecting Customize."
I see it's now called "input languages switching". I know it's a keyboard layout, but OK, I will play along. Still, nothing is changed by any of this if I have two "languages" called "Swedish keyboard"!
So I thought I would make this hot little feature more useful by adding some additional languages so that I can communicate in a few more additional languages instead of being stuck on English with Swedish keyboard. That proved to be most difficult. For starters, Windows never heard of "English (United Kingdom)". The Settings app has no record of it. It only displays "English (United States)".
The "preferred languages" language is "English (United States)" and the "Windows display language" is "English (United States)". This is almost OK. I do prefer it when Windows talks English. Unfortunately, this is not English, this is something else. Can you make sense of what Windows is saying here? I can't, and my understanding of English is pretty good if I may say so myself, even though it's not my first language. I can only speculate and make educated guesses on what's going on here.
Windows has always been confusing when it comes to foreign language support for as long as I can remember. Let's not forget the "MUI" packages for Windows and Office that were only reserved for privileged few customers who payed enough money to access these premium features. But here we have Windows 10, failing English, in year 2021.
If "English (United Kingdom)" is not found in the Settings app, then where do I find it? Where does Windows get the idea from that I want "English (United Kingdom)" in addition to "English (United Kingdom)"? I checked the old Control Panel options already, as far as I can tell, it's not possible to add or remove keyboard layouts or "languages" that way, like in the old days. It does list both of these English variants though. Go figure!
In an attempt to get a handle on "English (United Kingdom)" I tried to add "English (United Kingdom)" in the Settings app where there was none. That gave me three different "languages" in system tray, one of which was "United Kingdom keyboard" (language!?).
That did give me the privilege (handle) to "Remove" it from the Settings app. But that did not have the effect I was hoping for. I still have this stubborn "English (United Kingdom)" language that won't go away. It does offer me the opportunity to learn British spellings like "colour" and "personalisation" by changing the display language.
I wish Microsoft would stop trying to "simplify" our lives by calling everything a "language" and bundling numerous locale related settings in single name entities. I may be using a Swedish keyboard, but that doesn't mean I want my Windows to be in Swedish. You don't know how I use my computer, despite your best efforts to find out with your telemetrics. Windows is still Windows, some things are hard to change.
I suspect this may be related to use of Microsoft account for automatic backup and sync of personal preferences. I did use British English at one point in a prior installation of Windows 10.
Help me Internet, you're my only hope...
I'm very sorry SamirGunic but I have no more ideas.
Such setting must be hidden somewhere but not in the usual places.
Clean install or live with this annoyance.
I had the same problem.
The easiest solution is this:
From language settings ADD English UK (unflag the language pack or anything that pops up).
Wait 3-4 seconds. Then remove English UK.
The tip worked perfectly, thank you!
SamirGunic i have struggled with the same issue
and found a simple solution
I just downloaded the English (UK) language pack and installed it.
after that I deleted it and the uk was gone.
worked for me.
This happen to me recently.
In short, what happened to you likely during the initial setup, you (or someone installing your machine) select English UK and hence it somehow defaults using UK in case you use non core display language.
To fix this, my only working solutions was to change the InstallLanguage through registry
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Nls\Language
You will likely notice the value is 0809 which refers to en-UK.
You need to replace it to the one you want, in case of en-US is 0409.
Reboot and the option should gone from Windows Display Language for good.
I just had this issue with my new laptop.
I managed to fix it using this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2y3Atx2wmD8
Basically, open powershell, enter the command:$1 = New-WinUserLanguageList en-USThen enter the command:
Set-WinUserLanguageList $1This basically creates a new list of languages for your user containing just en-US, then it sets it to the current user. After running this command, the united kingdom language was gone and I just needed to manually enter my own languages.
- Legend, thank you NandoKools. That PowerShell command did the trick. All the other methods of jumping through various language and keyboard prompts and settings simply didn't resolve the issue - but the PowerShell method instantly corrected the issue.
This worked for me as well! Thanks for the tip. To add, this solution can be found in the manual accessible by this command:
Get-Help New-WinUserLanguageList -FullLook for example 1:
$1 = New-WinUserLanguageList en-US $1.Add("fr-FR") Set-WinUserLanguageList $1Using language codes you can build a list of what you need.
here is a final solution that can solve the problem absolutely
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aN1mxtmBFqQ
I had this same problem. I tried all the solutions in the reply section and none worked, but I managed to fix the issue by opening Settings -> Time & Language -> Language. Then, under "Preferred Languages", I clicked on "English (United States)", clicked on "Options", and then clicked on "Add a keyboard" to add "Swedish" and then remove "Swedish". That fixed my issue. Refer to the images below for a walkthrough.
Hopefully, this solves the issue for anyone who gets this problem again.
Hi SamirGunic
Open regedit and navigate to this key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\ContentIndex\Language
Export it just in case, then remove English_UK subkey.Navigate Settings inside the Start Menu
打开 开始菜单, 找到 设置 并点击进入
Click on Time & Languages
点击 时间和语言
Click the Language in the list on the left-listed list
点击左侧列表里的 语言
Click the Add a language
点击 添加语言
Please search United Kingdom in the search bar
搜索栏 里搜索 英国 或是 United Kingdom
Be sure to uncheck all the features in the pop window, and then click on the Next botton
要把 弹窗 里的所有的功能全都 取消勾选, 随后点击 下一步 按钮
You should be seeing the English(United Kingdom) at the Preferred languages list, finally by now, just go ahead and click on it then press the Remove botton
终于啊, 读者应该可以在 首选语言 中看到 英语(英国), 快点击下面的 删除 按钮吧
You should be good to go at this point
这样大概就大功告成了吧
Try do not wiggle any of your little smarts games on the next new fresh install of Windows OS for the next time 🙂
下次重新安装Windows系统的时候可别再抖什么机灵了啊 🙄
- This is the only way worked for me.
Oh no... not the registry... I'm allergic to everything related to Windows registry. As soon as I see mentions of RegEdit and these long registry key names including "CurrentControlSet", I know trouble is awaiting around the corner! LOL 😂
A corrupted Windows registry is in fact the reason I had to reinstall Windows 10 on this PC. I had not reinstalled Windows on this PC since 2018, and so I finally did it a few days ago. I had not reinstalled Windows for little over 3 years, something of a personal record for me. I posted about this issue earlier. Basically, what happened was Windows Update installed KB5001391 which sent my PC on a BSOD/GSOD roller-coaster, causing sudden power loss, corrupted and auto-"repaired" Windows registry, resulting in a state of "No Audio Output device is installed" which I could not recover from despite my best efforts. I did recover form it using System Restore points two or three times, but Windows Update kept installing KB5001391 repeatedly like a vicious idiot, and kept breaking my Windows installation repeatedly and on purpose, up to the point where I could no longer recover and I lost the good restore point along the way. Thankfully, Microsoft stopped pushing out KB5001391 after people started complaining, myself included, but it was already too late for me. The registry was corrupted beyond repair, so I had to reinstall Windows altogether to get the audio problem sorted out.
I am probably not alone to feel this way about the Windows registry. It's one of the absolutely worst parts of Windows that no one talks about or pays any attention to, or seeks improvement or replacement of in the Feedback Hub app (or any other open forum). A very large portion of Windows issues over the past 20 years has been caused by the Windows registry alone. If you run into a registry issue, you're almost guaranteed to need to reinstall Windows to sort it out, unless you have system image backup. That's why Microsoft has built in so many different recovery mechanisms over the years for rebuilding and repairing registry issues, including System Restore and RegBack (which is officially disabled and deprecated as of Windows 10 version 1803).
In any case, I will have a look at your suggestion Spigolo. I am not able to test it at the moment, but I will test it and report back as soon as I can. Thanks in advance!If you prefer good ole command prompt, I have you covered 🙂
From an elevated Prompt type these two commands:
reg export HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\ContentIndex\Language %userprofile%\desktop\language.regreg delete HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\ContentIndex\Language\English_UK
To restore:
reg import %userprofile%\desktop\language.reg
