Talk:Localized Language Names

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Revision as of 03:11, 13 November 2009 by Osk (talk | contribs)

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Some languages have multiple scripts. What is the proper way to show that? E.g. Traditional vs Simplified Chinese? And I think Azeri has multiple scripts.

For BibleDesktop, we have localized zh (traditional) and zh_CN (simplified). This is not quite right, but fits pragmatically based on Java's locale and resource bundle mechanism.

For Java a locale is lang, lang_country, lang_country_dialect, or lang__dialect (where country is unstated). There is no standard for dialect, so it could be used for script.

I think there is a standard for scripts and that CLDR and ICU are starting to do something with it. Any thoughts??? --Dmsmith 00:37, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Script codes come from ISO 15924, and according to BCP 47, the way to include them in a locale is between the language and region, so en-Latn-US would be English written in Latin script in/for the US. (This is a bad example because BCP 47 says not to overspecify by naming a script when it should be obvious.) BCP 47 does specify using hyphen to separate tags, but I would guess that Java would be happy with the same style of tags if you just map the hyphens to underscores.
Traditional Chinese is zh-Hant, simplified is zh-Hans. Mongolian in Mongolian script, Cyrillic, and Latin would be mn-Mong, mn-Cyrl, and mn-Latn respectively.
This is all incorporated into CLDR and ICU, but more importantly is officially recognized/maintained by ISO, Unicode, and IANA. --Osk 03:11, 13 November 2009 (UTC)