Resolved!
Seems that editing both

/etc/sysconfig/in18n
Code:
LANG="C"
COUNTRY="us"
LANGUAGE="us"
CHARSET="iso8859-15"
XMODIFIERS=""
and
etc/init.d/knoppix-autoconfig
Code:
### localization
# Allow language specification via commandline. The default language
# will be overridden via "lang=de" boot commandline
LANGUAGE="$(getbootparam lang 2>/dev/null)"
[ -n "$LANGUAGE" ] || LANGUAGE="us"
has resolved this issue. woohoo!
Thanks for the point in the right direction, uraclea2002