If you're going to use English and aren't actually using the verbose forms of $& and friends it's better to use English '-no_match_vars'; instead so as not to slow down every regex match your program does (presuming a post 5.8 perl; before that there's not a way to dodge the slowdown bullet).

(But really, bite the bullet and learn which is which; or just remember: perldoc perlvar is my friend.)