My GTI is talking French now -- help!

I have not a clue, but that's so funny that I'd leave it!

Mon Dieu!

She must be de modele bilingue (bilingual) for de Canajun market!

I hope my Jetta 5 TDI does not decide to start speaking Mexican (Spanish), since I do not. Come to think of it, I hope it doesn't start talking at all, since it is not supposed to!

Years ago I had a Dodge 600ES (company car) and it only spoke English, but could be switched from female to male, if one was too irritating with it's constant messages. 100km from fuel in the Canadian Rockies, and she kept nagging me that "Your Fuel is Low" every 5 minutes as I was fearing I would run dry! Thank heavens we are not allowed to carry guns, or I would have shot her.

Stuart H. In the Frozen North (Spruce Grove, Alberta, Canada) where it's -18C with a wind chill of -26C

Mon Dieu!

She must be de modele bilingue (bilingual) for de Canajun market!

I hope my Jetta 5 TDI does not decide to start speaking Mexican (Spanish), since I do not. Come to think of it, I hope it doesn't start talking at all, since it is not supposed to!

Years ago I had a Dodge 600ES (company car) and it only spoke English, but could be switched from female to male, if one was too irritating with it's constant messages. 100km from fuel in the Canadian Rockies, and she kept nagging me that "Your Fuel is Low" every 5 minutes as I was fearing I would run dry! Thank heavens we are not allowed to carry guns, or I would have shot her.

Stuart H. In the Frozen North (Spruce Grove, Alberta, Canada) where it's -18C with a windchill of -26C

Car... "Your door is ajar" Driver... "No it is not!" Car... "Your door is ajar" Driver... "No it is not, it's still a door!" Car... "Your door is ajar" Driver... "Idiot, my door never changed into a jar" Car... "Your door is ajar" Driver... BANG! Car... "OK... It's still a door. But it's open!"

That's odd... but I have changed the instrument cluster coding from US to Canadian(Km) but never played with Euro coding which might change the language. Did you find any French fries when picking up the car??? Can't see how the coil could cause the other issue even if an idiot replaced the coil.

Consider this: the default language is French. The idiot disconnected the battery, and the computer defaulted to... French!

Au moins c'est ce que je pense, et je suis coller à elle.

sorry, don't agree. Never seen that happen and I disconnected countless batteries over the years.

Hey, I'm just pointing out a *possible* reason!

Mais là encore, je n'ai jamais vu ce soit!

Regardless, I don't think anyone has told the OP how to change it back!

I just called the shop that did the ignition coil work. They checked around and said that the only way they could find to change the language was to hook up a scantool. Sounds like there's no special button sequence to get to that setting. One minor possibility they offered was that the language changing may be a sign of a short circuit in the instrument cluster. Anyway, I'll have them reset the language for me.

OK, but I'm hungry for French fries now(lol)!

I called the vw shop that did the ignition coil work. They checked around and told me that the only method they could find was to use a scantool to change the computer's language setting. They didn't find any button/control sequence to allow one to change the language without a scantool. So at this point I'm going to take it over to them to get it reset. One outside possibility they mentioned was that this symptom could be from a short circuit in the instrument cluster.

Epilogue:

Before I got around to taking this car over the shop to reset the language, it spontaneously switched back to English, and I'm once again greeted with, "Fasten Seatbelt". Maybe there is a short somewhere...