Darek speaks Polish, and the app opens in Polish on every phone

Context

ADR-0004 makes English the base: strings are written in English, translated from English, and an unmatched locale falls back to English. That suits an app whose users could be anyone.

Darek’s users cannot be anyone. The Commands, the recogniser and the Reply are Polish (ADR-0009), so a person who does not speak Polish cannot use him at all. The owner set Polish as the main language on 2026-10-31.

Decision

ADR-0004 stands for how strings are written — English in values/, Polish in values-pl/, translated from English and held complete by the translation gate — and is amended for which one shows:

• On first launch the app sets its locale to Polish through AppCompat’s setApplicationLocales, whatever the phone’s language. It does so once, guarded by a one-time DataStore marker, so a later choice in the switcher, English or “follow the phone”, sticks.
• Commands and Replies are Polish and are not translated. They are speech, not UI: they live in the Command definitions, outside strings.xml, and the translation gate does not see them.
• The Reply is spoken in the chosen Persona’s own Polish voice (ADR-0016), bundled in the app (ADR-0014), so every phone has it, whatever its text-to-speech engine. What happens when that voice fails is ADR-0011’s.

Alternatives

Polish as the base (values/ in Polish). Simplest on paper, but every template script, the translator brief and the gate assume an English source. Opening in Polish gets the same result for the user without forking the tooling.

Follow the phone’s language. An English-language phone would get an English UI around a Polish voice — a mismatch that only confuses.

Consequences

• The Play listing’s default language is Polish (pl-PL), with English as a translation; the screenshots are Polish.
• TranslationTest and the gate keep working unchanged.
• A user who picks English in the switcher keeps English; Darek still speaks Polish.
• Restore default settings sets Polish, as a first launch does, rather than following the phone.