Third test now genuinely fails pre-fix (raw UTF-8 skip_name read), fixing the reviewer-flagged passes-either-way case. skip_names are lowercased on load, so assert on .lower().
dialect.py: all 11 text-mode open() calls (6 read, 5 write) omitted encoding=, so on a non-UTF-8-locale process (e.g. German Windows / cp1252) UTF-8-written JSON and AAAK text is decoded via the OS codepage, corrupting umlauts. config.py: 4 text opens lacked encoding= (config.json + people_map read paths, two writes); the other json.dump write paths already pinned UTF-8.
Audit findings #51 (dialect.py:360) and #84 (config.py:377). Regression: tests/test_encoding_hardening.py forces cp1252 default open and asserts umlaut round-trips through from_config / config.json read / raw-UTF-8 skip_name.
KeilerHirsch