Location and language(s)

[Bjørn Ingmar Berg]

When installing Ubuntu (or any other modern distro I've tried) it asks
what time-zone I'm in.  I tell it, and it sets time and time-zone
information accordingly, as well as the language both in Linux itself
and dictionary.  This is far from how I would wish it to be.  I'd like
to sit watching the Nile float slowly by, with my computer on local
egyptian time, menues and applications in english and my spellchecker
helping me write norwegian.  (For example.)

My point is that time-zone, OS language and dictionary language is and
should not be interdependant.  It would be great to be able to set up
the system, chosing these three individually.  And when it comes to
language it would be great to be able to change or add to these as I
go along.  I suspect that some if this, possibly all of it, is
possible right away.  I see there are "locales" and "language packs"
that can be added.  I also remember a tip on this list enabling two
different users to have different languages.

My problem is that I don't understand how this works, what packages
does what, and how these things are interconnected if at all.  And so
far the info and how-tos I've skimmed seems to assume I already
understand these things.

What I hope to end up with is a setup where I can change time-zone
without that affecting anything else; where I can toggle Ubuntu itself
between english and norwegian; and where I have dictionaries and spell
checkers for english, norwegian and german available.
(I prefer the OS, menues and so on to be english, that way it
corresponds with magazines I read and internet as well, as most
websites are in english.  But it would be nice to switch it to
norwegian for guests or demo-use.  And naturally I'd like to have
spell-checkers etc. for the languages I speak.)

I suspect this is easy, when you know how.  But I don't, and I'm guess
this has confused me too much to sort it out on my own.

Help?


Regards,
Bjørn Ingmar