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The phone below has a _Choose language_ menu in which you can choose your
language from a multitude of languages and variants, including _日本語（アメリカ合衆国）_
:

[![American
Japanese](https://i.stack.imgur.com/L7WAYm.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/L7WAYm.png)

**QUESTION: Is there really an American Japanese language variant?**  
If yes, how different is it from Tokyo Japanese?

Notes:

  * The title of the dialog is _Change language_ , and units/date format/first day of week/etc are covered by a different dialog.
  * Another choice is _Italiano (Sudafrica)_. Even though it might sound surprising, there actually [is](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_South_African) a variant of Italian in South Africa.
  * A Google search shows that the `ja_US` locale seems to be used by quite a few people. Example taken from a technical mailing list (I don't imply that this person is right, I just say that this point of view exists):

> you can configure Wine to display Japanese by using the LC_ALL enviroment
> variable. In the United States, set it to ja_US, and in Japan, set it to
> ja_JP. The reason for the localization difference is because programs
> compensate for the different dialects of a language across different nations
> (think en_US and en_GB, one for the US and one for England.)
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question
dialects
Does the Japanese language have an American variant?
No, there is no such thing as "American nihongo". As the comments have
suggested, we can assume this has something to do with "locale" settings, such
as date formats (although it's hard to see how writing dates in American would
actually help Japanese speakers), and perhaps things like units (where
Japanese speakers in America will perforce be using "American customary" units
like 'inch' and 'gallon'). It helps if you understand that 99% of the people
involved in so-called localisation have no clue how language works, and so you
can expect that this stuff will not make sense. (My computer is set to use
something called "Danish English", because that's the most usable option I
have found; I am English and live in Japan.)
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