Deutsch

[darkoshi]

Every once in a while, Firefox shows me error messages (like Page Not Found) in German. I don't know why. I happen to be able to read and understand German, but what could that have to do with it? This time, Google is doing it to me:



The only reason Google shows me as signed in, is because I signed into YouTube. Yet my YouTube pages are still in English.

I bet it is related to one of my plug-ins. But why would it happen so intermittently?

Comments

Ich verstehe nur Bahnhof

[marahmarie]

I must have done five double takes staring at the address bar and the German on that page. Normally that would only show up on google.de, ja?

So I uh, googled, and found this: https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/3333234?hl=en

It's not an answer to why Google is spricht Deutsch to you but at least will hopefully let you change all their services back to English (or ensure they already are in English and stay that way).

If you installed a computer OS with German set as the default, that could be an issue: https://www.quora.com/Why-does-google-display-the-wrong-language-for-me-over-and-over-again

Some causes and answers are listed here (basically, English-speaking Google users who don't live in US territory are having problems so most of it does not apply to your situation but at least gives one an idea of show-English-only fixes that are working vs. fixes that are not): https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!msg/websearch/cVE52060AOg/mVIjVvKG2OgJ

Why would it be related to one of your add-ons? Which one?

Re: Ich verstehe nur Bahnhof

[darkoshi]

I suspect an add-on, because they are often the cause of any issues, but also because I recall seeing either a settings page or help page from one of them be in German. I'll have to look through my list of add-ons to see if I can find which one it was. Then I could check the source code to see if there's anything that might occasionally be overriding my normal settings.

Thanks for the links. Right now, the Google language settings shows English selected. When I have the problem again, I'll check if it was changed. But I don't think it is Google-specific, due to general web error pages sometimes being shown in German too. I think my browser is sending some flag saying "show me stuff in German!"

Truth be told, it's been more a source of amusement for me so far, than an actual problem.

I haven't been using any VPN, by the way.

Re: Ich verstehe nur Bahnhof

[marahmarie]

I totally get it being "more of an amusement than an actual problem" but the investigator in me has to track this stuff down, and the fact that you say web pages in general seem to be rather randomly in play and that it might be a browser (Firefox) problem intrigues me. Have you considered checking through about:config for any language flags? Add-ons tend to set a lot of their preferences in such a way that the results of those settings are passed to Firefox so about:config can reveal them. In fact... *plays in about:config for a minute* a search on the word "language" should turn up a couple of flags; so should a search on "en-us".

It would be nice to know just to satisfy my now-burning curiosity how this turns out, if you manage to track down the source of the bug/problem/issue.

Re: Ich verstehe nur Bahnhof

[darkoshi]

It happened again. After I logged into Youtube, my Google pages switched to German. So I went to the Google language settings page, and it was set to German! I have no idea how it got set that way... I mean, it's not beyond me to do such a thing, but surely I would remember doing it, if I had done it... Anyway, I've switched it back to English, so I'll see if it stays that way now.

Re: Ich verstehe nur Bahnhof

[marahmarie]

Awesome. Hope that fixes it. :)

Re: Ich verstehe nur Bahnhof

[marahmarie]

It still bugs me, though, what's triggering Google (since it does seem to be Google at this point, not one of your add-ons?) to set a flag to switch your language to German. Is it watching German language videos? I mean, you don't have to answer that. I'm just thinking perhaps you do something on Google in German (look up words, watch German language videos, or heck, I don't know) that makes them change the language preference automagically.

If that's so, though, it kind of sucks. Say my non-existent German husband who only speaks/writes/thinks in German Googles something in German within my open English-language browser, on my computer, so Google sets some kind of flag (against my account/IP) to show everything in German from that point on? That to me would qualify as a bug, not a feature.

[davesmusictank.livejournal.com]

Ja, ist cranky ... no idea.