I did exactly the same thing. I think that free rootfs page needs a little warning on not to maybe delete the locale-archive file

Managed to get the texts and language settings menu back to normal by copying the locale-archive file to my N900 from a scratchbox running on my Ubuntu. It was PR1.0 I think so not sure if it will cause problems..

Some UI lag after all the optimizations to free rootfs space. Did manage to free 50 megs which is nice but if this lag continues I guess it's reflash time afterall