I don't know what happened, but all of a sudden my Safari browser thinks my native language is Chinese whenever I access Google sites (gmail, maps)--not for any other sites. This has been complicating matters for me, and I cannot get it to speak English again. This does not happen with Firefox.

There's nothing in preferences that works, and I'm at a complete loss how to fix this.

Why does Google think I'm Chinese, just because I lust after Chinese women (and how would they know that)?

More important, what can I do to fix this? Any ideas out there?

You must have visited a questionable porn site that was under government surveillance, unless you want everything you do on that computer to be transited back to big brother you will have to buy a new one...

Have you gone to your "preferences menu" and tried to change your search preference?

Yes, preferences offers no help, I've played with all obvious possibilities.

Why would visiting a porn site under government surveillance result in only Google sites coming up in Chinese? And to which government are you referring?

That might be stored in a cookie, or something resembling a cookie specific to the Safari browser.

I've had a similar problem before and it was a little challenging fixing it.

Make sure you are not logged into Google. If you are, then log out. If it's fixed, the problem IS in the Google settings, you just need help finding it, but I doubt that's the case.

Once you are certain you are logged out (you can see the option to sign in on various pages) try clicking on "+[symbol]" (or the + sign followed by the Chinese character for "You") on the top left part of the screen. If you don't see this, try clicking on a Google logo or the words "Google in English" until you see it. After that you should hopefully see a dropdown option where you can select "English (United States)".

Thank you thank you thank you.

After clicking on lots of Chinese characters, and looking for the Chinese ideograms meaning "English" (which I never found), I finally clicked on "Google," and got the drop-down menu with more languages than I want to worry about--including "US."

Did I say Thank you?

Well, it reverted back to Chinese not long after a short period of speaking English. And I had to click on a lot of Chinese characters before I got a page with a clickable "Google" with the drop-down language menu, so here I go searching again....

Google is a benevolent Omnipotent overload. All seeing and all knowing. If Google thinks you are Chinese,,,, perhaps you ARE Chinese. Who am I supposed to believe? You... or Google??

If Google says you are Chinese...... Ni hao laozong Hunterman

Are you in China now? Google will pick up on the isp account that you are using to access the internet and try to accommodate you thinking that you are Chinese, had this happen to me in Thailand.

If you were in China and are now someplace else and your having this issue, then you may have a persistent cookie on your browser, if thats the case then reset Safari, clear the Cache and then just to be sure quit and restart Safari.

If you are or were using a VPN then you need to talk to someone like Sancho who is much more technically adept than the average monger.

BTW, the government part in my first response was meant as a joke, but you never know...

Clear your cookies.

Thanks, Cat. So far, so good. Again. Looks like it was a malevolent Chinese cookie, not the fortune type. But I've not been to China (or anywhere nearby recently), so who knows how it got into my computer.

I was "turning Japanese" for a while, Sancho, but never had the pleasure of being Chinese, Google's opinion notwithstanding. Although there might be some advantages....

You 'claim' you are not Chinese. Google apparently says you ARE Chinese. Cat says you just got a bad Chinese fortune cookie stuck in your computer. Probably not the weirdest thing ever found stuck in a computer and I can't say I've never got drunk and woke up the next day with Chinese take out food left in strange places.

I'm having a hard time knowing who to believe but usually if I was searching for the correct answer to conflicting information...... I would consult Google first, so if Google is the one saying saying you are Chinese???????

What does Wikipedia have to say about it?