How do I remove "English (United Kingdom)"?

[SamirGunic]

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...

[#2]

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.

[#3]

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!

[#4]

@SamirGunic 

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.reg

reg delete HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\ContentIndex\Language\English_UK

To restore:

reg import %userprofile%\desktop\language.reg

[#5]

Unfortunately this was not good enough for Windows. I have removed "English_UK" and rebooted.

I also checked the first (001) control set hive where control parameters are stored.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\ContentIndex\Language
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\ContentIndex\Language

In both of these locations, I only have "English_US" and "Neutral". The "English_UK" key has been removed with success. But I still have "English (United Kingdom)" in system tray as a language option.

I have restored (imported) the Reg file I exported previously (all of ContentIndex). I then tried to do a German switcheroo by adding German language to the mix so I can kick out "English (United Kingdom)". That didn't work, as you can see by the screenshots below.

This is hopeless... I'm not reinstalling Windows again.

[#6]

As a last test, I created a new local user account. By default, Windows adds following "preferred languages":

• English (Sweden)
• English (United States)
• English (United Kingdom)

I guess it inherits the "English (United Kingdom)" by some magical glue. But at least it's shown in the Settings app for this new account.

The display language was set to "English (United States)", as expected.

The "Swedish keyboard" was applied to "English (United States)" and to "English (United Kingdom)". The "English (Sweden)" had no keyboard applied to it. I think it only adds Swedish spell checking support, inking support and Swedish dictionary (if I'm reading the symbols/icons above correctly).

After removing "English (United Kingdom)" I am left with "English (United States)" with Swedish keyboard (what I wanted all along), and "English (Sweden)" with Swedish keyboard (this seems as if Swedish keyboard has been moved from the removed English (United Kingdom) to this English (Sweden) where there was no keyboard previously).

At this point I could just remove "English (Sweden)" and keep only "English (United States)" with Swedish keyboard. This would remove the language selection icon from system tray. Except Swedish spell checking would not work in Windows and across all apps, and I do want to intend support for more languages (UK English is just not one of them, and the reason I wanted to remove it).

The main problem with this "solution" is that this is not my user account. I would like to be able to remove "English (United Kingdom)" equally as easy on my main account as I just did on this test account.

Windows and its languages and locale settings... absolutely horrible!

[#7]

@SamirGunic 

Try this procedure.

Open Control Panel

Region

tab Administrative

Copy settings

Check both flags under Copy your current settings to and confirm:

Now restart and create a new local administrator user and login with it.

Check if English UK is still present in language settings.

[#8]

Sadly, impossible. I did exactly what you said. I checked the two boxes, clicked OK, restarted, and made a new user called "Blabla" and made him administrator without password (danger zone).

After signing in with Blabla, I get a bit different language configuration than I had previously when I made a new user account. But I still got the "English (United Kingdom)".

[#9 · Accepted solution]

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.

[#10]

Thanks for helping out Spigolo! You had some interesting ideas. Especially the last idea was very interesting, to see how oddly Windows behaves when you changes those settings. I might pick up where we left off at a later time. But for now, I will give this a rest and live with it. If I had not reinstalled most of my apps already, I would create a new user profile and move over and use that profile instead. But for now at least, I am stuck with this one. Thanks again!

[#11]

Thank you @SamirGunic 

You could have stumbled upon a bug, so my advice is to submit a feedback to developers. Press Win+F.

Let us know if you will find a working solution.

[#12]

Sorry for ressurecting this, but I just reinstall my windows 11 and got hit with a default "English (UnitedKingdom)" keyboard. I was able to resolve this by adding the exact language and the exact keyboard layout and then remove the keyboard layout. You might have to add another keyboard layout to the list just so you can remove the target keyboard layout. I also did copy the language setting to my welcome screen and new user screen. Hope that help somebody.

[#13]

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.

[#14]

@SamirGunic

I agree with you that this windows sh*t issue is very annoying but here is your solution I have found that solved the problem immediately for me and will probably help you too

https://youtu.be/y0NrdGBaCAE
Let us know if you have succedded, good luck!

Note! if you have already deleted english united kingdom in regedit and it doesn't appear anymore under the path
Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\International\User Profile\ 

then you need to start by adding back english untied kingdom by typing 'add language' in settings. and then follow the video in the link.

[#15]

The way that I did it was to reinstall the ENG (UK) language package and to remove it afterwards. @BennyGaler Go to:

Add the ENG UK Language 

Let is INSTALL and then REMOVE IT

I hope that works for you

[#16]

I've been looking for this answer for weeks man u must submet this on reddit

[#17]

I managed to remove the English (United Kingdom) without going into registry etc. I solved this windows riddle. 

What i did and removed the annoying English (United Kingdom) from the input language options is the following:

On the "display language" settings of windows I had United States English and the input keyboards  were English (United States) & Greek like I wanted it to be. But in the language input next to the clock the EN UK is still there.

I went in the settings and changed the display language to EN UK. the moment I did this the input languages became 3 and the EN UK appeared there together with EN US & Greek.

So, I moved up  the EN US language (right click and move up) in order to make it the main input language and in this way I was able to right click and remove the EN UK. I logged out and logged in again, as windows was asking in order for the changes to take effect.

When I logged in I went in the settings again. I made sure the EN UK keyboard was not there (with display language EN UK) and then changed back to display language EN US. rebooted and now the keyboards are only EN US and Greek, as I wanted. En UK is gone.

[#18]

Excellent! It worked flawlessly. Greetings from a happy fellow Greek Win10 user

[#19]

@luongvm183 THANK YOU SO MUCH! This was the most easiest fix compared to everything else and it worked perfectly. I'm on windows 11 and had the same problem. Just add the exact same language and then the same keyboard layout inside that language. Then remove the above keyboard layout so it perfectly matches the one you want to get rid of. As soon as I checked, the languages/keyboard layouts "merged" together and I was left with a single one, which I then promptly deleted!

Thanks again! Hopefully this helps more people 🙂

[#20]

 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 🙄

@Spigolo