[tex-live] changed hyphenation after update to texlive 2012

[Karl Berry]

Hi Achim,

    I've just updated from texlive 2007 to texlive 2012 

Turns out the actual change happened in 2008.

    Is this a bug in pdftex or is my
    installation messed up?

As far as I can discern, it is the 2007 texlive that is wrong here.

Starting with your test document:
  \documentclass{article}
  \usepackage[british]{babel}
  \begin{document}
  \showhyphens{consequence}
  \end{document}

and changing the line
  \showhyphens{consequence}
to
  \showhyphens{\showthe\language consequence}

shows that \language is zero in the 2007 tl, which is of course the
US (not UK) English patterns, and con-se-quence is expected in US English.

In 2008, by contrast, \language is 50 for me, presumably UK English
(although I didn't actually check), and thus con-sequence is expected.
In every year 2008--2012 inclusive, I get nonzero \language and
con-sequence.

I did not attempt to trace where the actual problem was occurring in
2007 -- presumably some unfortunate combination of TL and babel
interfaces.  Lacking a time machine, there's nothing to be done about it
in any case, seems to me.

Best,
karl