diff --git a/ChangeLog b/ChangeLog
index 78cfe0023..e6e574550 100644
--- a/ChangeLog
+++ b/ChangeLog
@@ -1,3 +1,9 @@
+2011-12-17  Richard Frith-Macdonald <rfm@gnu.org>
+
+	* configure.ac: Try to make detection of compilers which don't support
+	locale/characterset handling for string literals somewhat friendly.
+	* configure: regenerate
+
 2011-12-17  Fred Kiefer <FredKiefer@gmx.de>
 
 	* Source/NSPortCoder.m (-versionForClassName:): Use NSInteger for
diff --git a/configure b/configure
index 2c75f4bd8..44db7181b 100755
--- a/configure
+++ b/configure
@@ -1489,7 +1489,7 @@ Optional Features:
                                 Disable importing of an existing GNUstep config
 				file and use inbuilt defaults instead.
   --disable-unicodeconstants
-	    Permits the use of a compiler which does not support unicode
+	    Ignores the use of a compiler which does not support unicode
 	    string constants.
   --enable-nxconstantstring
 	    Enables the use of the NXConstantString class for old compilers.
@@ -5268,9 +5268,8 @@ $as_echo "yes" >&6; };
     else
       { $as_echo "$as_me:$LINENO: result: no" >&5
 $as_echo "no" >&6; };
-      { { $as_echo "$as_me:$LINENO: error: Your compiler does not appear to support UTF-8 string constants and any code which depends on non US-ASCII text in string constants would perform incorrectly.  If you do not care about this (or you know your code will only ever produce ASCII or UTF-8 string literals), please confgure using --disable-unicodeconstants" >&5
-$as_echo "$as_me: error: Your compiler does not appear to support UTF-8 string constants and any code which depends on non US-ASCII text in string constants would perform incorrectly.  If you do not care about this (or you know your code will only ever produce ASCII or UTF-8 string literals), please confgure using --disable-unicodeconstants" >&2;}
-   { (exit 1); exit 1; }; }
+      { $as_echo "$as_me:$LINENO: WARNING: Your compiler does not appear to support locales or command line options to control handling of charactersets.  This means that using any source code code containing non US-ASCII text in string literals may give unexpected results (or crashes) at runtime.  However, as long as any such literals only use the UTF-8 characterset, this is unlikely to be a problem. Please confgure using --disable-unicodeconstants to avoid seeing this warning." >&5
+$as_echo "$as_me: WARNING: Your compiler does not appear to support locales or command line options to control handling of charactersets.  This means that using any source code code containing non US-ASCII text in string literals may give unexpected results (or crashes) at runtime.  However, as long as any such literals only use the UTF-8 characterset, this is unlikely to be a problem. Please confgure using --disable-unicodeconstants to avoid seeing this warning." >&2;}
     fi
   fi
   export LANG="$saved_LANG"
diff --git a/configure.ac b/configure.ac
index 4a9acfb07..fbbf13323 100644
--- a/configure.ac
+++ b/configure.ac
@@ -1031,7 +1031,7 @@ GS_EXEC_CHARSET=
 GS_INPUT_CHARSET=
 AC_ARG_ENABLE(unicodeconstants,
       [  --disable-unicodeconstants
-	    Permits the use of a compiler which does not support unicode
+	    Ignores the use of a compiler which does not support unicode
 	    string constants.],,)
 if test "$enable_unicodeconstants" != "no"; then
   AC_LANG_PUSH(C)
@@ -1063,7 +1063,7 @@ if test "$enable_unicodeconstants" != "no"; then
       GS_INPUT_CHARSET=-finput-charset=UTF-8
     else
       AC_MSG_RESULT([no]);
-      AC_MSG_ERROR([Your compiler does not appear to support UTF-8 string constants and any code which depends on non US-ASCII text in string constants would perform incorrectly.  If you do not care about this (or you know your code will only ever produce ASCII or UTF-8 string literals), please confgure using --disable-unicodeconstants])
+      AC_MSG_WARN([Your compiler does not appear to support locales or command line options to control handling of charactersets.  This means that using any source code code containing non US-ASCII text in string literals may give unexpected results (or crashes) at runtime.  However, as long as any such literals only use the UTF-8 characterset, this is unlikely to be a problem. Please confgure using --disable-unicodeconstants to avoid seeing this warning.])
     fi
   fi
   export LANG="$saved_LANG"