programming languages aren't allowed to be in non-english somehow?
The possibility of incorrect parsing of equation with a variadic function that contains a decimal number in the equation.
However, this is a localization as even the functions change names.
https://www.reddit.com/r/excel/comments/1flsvyu/separator_co...
It’s just a locale setting as to which is applied. If you use English (US or UK) then your argument separator will be a comma. If you use other languages, then a semi colon will apply. You’ll find most guidance online referring to English language functions and comma separators, but ultimately it doesn’t really matter. If you ship a spreadsheet to me that you wrote in German functions and syntax that contains:
=SVERWEIS(X2;A:C;3;0)
I’ll open that and find
=VLOOKUP(X2,A:C,3,0)
It does irk me a bit (though not as much as the translated VBA back in the day). But that's probably because I know English, I often look for solutions to my problems in English, not in my native language, and then would have to mentally translate that back. But that's perhaps a burden for programmers more than for typical users.
A few thoughts:
• it's been that way for decades, at this point. So changing it would annoy a lot of users
• the problem with comma and semicolon would remain unless you want entering numbers normally and within a formula to be different. I'm not sure that's good in a product built around numbers (and often numbers that should be written and formatted like any other number in that country).
• making it configurable might work, but that then requires more testing, although sometimes it's not clear how much testing Microsoft is still doing, so that might not be much of a point. But adding options also has UX limits and not just in the length of the settings screen.
Fun fact: in European and Brazilian Portuguese, the same function names can refer to different things. European SUBSTITUIR² is REPLACE (Brazilian MUDAR), Brazilian SUBSTITUIR³ is SUBSTITUTE (European SUBST).
¹ I've found this solution https://superuser.com/questions/1908516/how-to-change-the-la... but I haven't tested it since I don't have MS Excel at hand to check
² https://support.microsoft.com/pt-pt/office/fun%C3%A7%C3%A3o-...
³ https://support.microsoft.com/pt-br/office/substituir-fun%C3...