JavaScript: Language Tags (BCP 47)
BCP 47 Language Tags is the Internet Best Current Practices (BCP) for language tags. The purpose of these language tags is to establish codes to help identify languages both spoken and written. A language tag is composed of a sequence of one or more subtags such as language, region, variant and script subtags. When a language tag is comprised of more than one subtag, the subtag values are separated by the "-" character.
You will most commonly find language tags written with 2 subtags - language and region. For example:
en-US
The language tag "en-US" is composed 2 subtags separated by the "-" character. The value "en" is the language subtag for English and the value "US" is the region subtag for the United States. Therefore, the language tag "en-US" represents US English.
However, language tags can also include additional subtags for variants and scripts, for example:
hy-Latn-IT-arevela
The language tag above would represent Eastern Armenian written in Latin script, as used in Italy.
Since it is impossible to list all of the BCP 47 language tags and their combinations, we have provided a list of what we have found to be the most commonly used language tags (defined using Language and Region subtags):
(Enter a value in the field above to quickly find a language tag in the table below)
Language Tag | Language | Region | Description |
---|---|---|---|
ar-SA | Arabic | Saudi Arabia | Arabic (Saudi Arabia) |
bn-BD | Bangla | Bangladesh | Bangla (Bangladesh) |
bn-IN | Bangla | India | Bangla (India) |
cs-CZ | Czech | Czech Republic | Czech (Czech Republic) |
da-DK | Danish | Denmark | Danish (Denmark) |
de-AT | German | Austria | Austrian German |
de-CH | German | Switzerland | "Swiss" German |
de-DE | German | Germany | Standard German (as spoken in Germany) |
el-GR | Greek | Greece | Modern Greek |
en-AU | English | Australia | Australian English |
en-CA | English | Canada | Canadian English |
en-GB | English | United Kingdom | British English |
en-IE | English | Ireland | Irish English |
en-IN | English | India | Indian English |
en-NZ | English | New Zealand | New Zealand English |
en-US | English | United States | US English |
en-ZA | English | South Africa | English (South Africa) |
es-AR | Spanish | Argentina | Argentine Spanish |
es-CL | Spanish | Chile | Chilean Spanish |
es-CO | Spanish | Columbia | Colombian Spanish |
es-ES | Spanish | Spain | Castilian Spanish (as spoken in Central-Northern Spain) |
es-MX | Spanish | Mexico | Mexican Spanish |
es-US | Spanish | United States | American Spanish |
fi-FI | Finnish | Finland | Finnish (Finland) |
fr-BE | French | Belgium | Belgian French |
fr-CA | French | Canada | Canadian French |
fr-CH | French | Switzerland | "Swiss" French |
fr-FR | French | France | Standard French (especially in France) |
he-IL | Hebrew | Israel | Hebrew (Israel) |
hi-IN | Hindi | India | Hindi (India) |
hu-HU | Hungarian | Hungary | Hungarian (Hungary) |
id-ID | Indonesian | Indonesia | Indonesian (Indonesia) |
it-CH | Italian | Switzerland | "Swiss" Italian |
it-IT | Italian | Italy | Standard Italian (as spoken in Italy) |
ja-JP | Japanese | Japan | Japanese (Japan) |
ko-KR | Korean | Republic of Korea | Korean (Republic of Korea) |
nl-BE | Dutch | Belgium | Belgian Dutch |
nl-NL | Dutch | The Netherlands | Standard Dutch (as spoken in The Netherlands) |
no-NO | Norwegian | Norway | Norwegian (Norway) |
pl-PL | Polish | Poland | Polish (Poland) |
pt-BR | Portugese | Brazil | Brazilian Portuguese |
pt-PT | Portugese | Portugal | European Portuguese (as written and spoken in Portugal) |
ro-RO | Romanian | Romania | Romanian (Romania) |
ru-RU | Russian | Russian Federation | Russian (Russian Federation) |
sk-SK | Slovak | Slovakia | Slovak (Slovakia) |
sv-SE | Swedish | Sweden | Swedish (Sweden) |
ta-IN | Tamil | India | Indian Tamil |
ta-LK | Tamil | Sri Lanka | Sri Lankan Tamil |
th-TH | Thai | Thailand | Thai (Thailand) |
tr-TR | Turkish | Turkey | Turkish (Turkey) |
zh-CN | Chinese | China | Mainland China, simplified characters |
zh-HK | Chinese | Hond Kong | Hong Kong, traditional characters |
zh-TW | Chinese | Taiwan | Taiwan, traditional characters |
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