Gnome-classic language turned into Chinese, how do I change it back to English?

Question

My newly installed Ubuntu 12.04 gnome-classic just turned into chinese locale after reboot, how do I change it back to English?

I can't find any language menus, and the ones I opened are, well, in chinese...

When I open a terminal and execute gnome-language-selector, I get lots of this in the prompt:

locale: Cannot set LC_MESSAGES to default locale: No such file or directory
locale: Cannot set LC_COLLATE to default locale: No such file or directory

Any ideas?

If I go to the Language section in Users, I only get the options in the picture.

Solution 1

I'd recommend you login into the Unity session, because I'm not sure where I can find all of these options in a Gnome Classic session.

---

Click on your username in the upper right corner of the screen, and choose the bottom option in the menu that pops out.

In the dialog that opens, the second option allows you to change your language.

Change it back to English, or whatever language you like. Then, reboot.

Solution 2

Solution:

1. Edit /etc/default/locale:

   LANG="en_US"
   LANGUAGE="en_US:en"
   

2. Edit ~/.pam_environment:

   LANG=en_US
   Language=en_US
   

Logout and Login or Reboot.

Comments

[Admin]

I solved it following the instructions of this post: askubuntu.com/questions/2855/locale-reset-lost-settings

[Martin Hansen]

Worked for me, was hard to navigate menus in chinese...

[techexpert]

Worked here too, especially after editing the second file (.pam_enviroment) - Thanks!