Languages

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This page looks at languages in terms of need in target countries, and availability in Linux.

Official Languages of Target Countries

Data on official languages from both

These sources often do not agree. The view on this page is that the more inclusive definition should be used, combining languages on both lists. Even if a language listed here is not formally adopted as an official language in the country of use, it is important enough for our purposes.

Country Official Other Language(s) Region(s)
Argentina Spanish living languages: 25
Guarani Corrientes, Misiones
Brazil Portuguese living languages: 188
China,
People's Republic of
Mandarin
(aka Putonghua)
living languages: 235
Cantonese Hong Kong, Macau (de facto)
English Hong Kong
Kazakh Ili Kazakh
Korean Changbai, Yanbian
Mongolian Inner Mongolia
Portuguese Macau
Tajik Taxkorgan
Tibetan Tibet
Uyghur Xinjiang
Zhuang Guangxi
Daur - regional -
Kalmyk-Oirat - regional -
Lu - regional -
Peripheral Mongolian - regional -
Central Tibetan - regional -
Uyghur - regional -
Xibe - regional -
Northern Zhuang - regional -
Egypt (Egyptian) Arabic living languages: 11
India Hindi
English
living languages: 415
sheduled official Assamese Assam
sheduled official Bengali Tripura, West Bengal
sheduled official Bodo Assam
sheduled official Dogri Jammu, Kashmir
sheduled official Gujarati Dadra, Nagar Haveli, Daman, Diu, Gujarat
sheduled official Kannada Karnataka
sheduled official Kashmiri Jammu, Kashmir
sheduled official Konkani Goa
sheduled official Maithili Bihar
sheduled official Malayalam Kerala, Pondicherry, Lakshadweep
Meitei Manipur
sheduled official Marathi Maharashtra
sheduled official Nepali Sikkim
sheduled official Oriya Orissa
sheduled official Punjabi Punjab
Sanskrit classical learning language
sheduled official Santali Jharkhand
sheduled official Sindhi Jammu, Kashmir
sheduled official Tamil Tamil Nadu, Pondicherry
sheduled official Telugu Andhra Pradesh, Pondicherry
sheduled official Urdu Jammu, Kashmir
French Pondicherry Union Territory - only
Libya Arabic (std) living languages: 9
Nigeria Hausa
Igbo
Yoruba
English
living languages: 510
widely used Adamawa, Edo, Efik, Fulfulde, Idoma, (central) Kanuri
Thailand Thai living languages: 74

Languages in Target Countries

Lists of languages of countries in discussions with OLPC, with links to priorities and status of OLPC-related language work in each, where available. All of these languages except Mongolian in its traditional alphabet can be entered, viewed, and printed in most distributions of Linux. Language support from one distribution can be easily added to almost any other. There are local OLPC organizations in several other countries.

Hausa, Igbo, and Yoruba (the most important three of the eight official languages of Nigeria other than English) lack further support, including native keyboard layouts and locales. Mongolian is currently supported only in Cyrillic, not in its traditional alphabet.

Europe and America

(en) English

Primary source language for the Internet, and for high-tech in general. Easier to describe materials for which this is not true in this section.

Users and translators: See Category:User en

(fr) French

Users and translators: See Category:User fr

(de) German

Users and translators: See Category:User de

(pt) Portuguese

Main dialects: Brazilian and continental

Users and translators: See Category:User pt

(es) Spanish

Users and translators: See Category:User es

(ru) Russian

Users and translators: See Category:User ru

(uk) Ukrainian

Users and translators: See Category:User uk

East and Central Asia

(ru) Russian

Users and translators: See Category:User ru

(zh) Chinese

Main written dialects: simplified and traditional

Users and translators: See Category:User zh

(ja) Japanese

Users and translators: See Category:User ja

(mn) Mongolian

Users and translators: See Category:User mn

(bo) Tibetan

Users and translators: See Category:User bo

South Asia

(bn) Bengali

Users and translators: See Category:User bn

(gu) Gujarati

Users and translators: See Category:User gu

(hi) Hindi

Users and translators: See Category:User hi

(kn) Kannada

Users and translators: See Category:User kn

(ml) Malayalam

Users and translators: See Category:User ml

(mr) Marathi

Users and translators: See Category:User mr

(np) Nepali

Users and translators: See Category:User np

(or) Oriya

Users and translators: See Category:User or

(pa) Punjabi

Users and translators: See Category:User pa

(ta) Tamil

Users and translators: See Category:User ta

(te) Telugu

Users and translators: See Category:User te

(th) Thai

Users and translators: See Category:User th

Sub-Saharan Africa

(ha) Hausa

Users and translators: See Category:User ha

(ig) Igbo

Users and translators: See Category:User ig

(yo) Yoruba

Users and translators: See Category:User yo

(rw) Kinyarwanda

Users and translators: See Category:User rw

Middle East and North Africa

(ar) Arabic

Users and translators: See Category:User ar

Linux Localizations

See also Locales, Keyboard layouts

Linux localization is complex. Several major components, including Mozilla, KDE, and OpenOffice, provide their own localizations. When a distribution of Linux is released in a particular language, it may be a limited subset of applications and of documentation that is supported. A number of languages are routinely supported in most distributions, while for other languages there may be only one or very few distributions including it.

You can use the search page at Distrowatch to look for distributions for particular languages, and for other functions, such as Linux for the blind.

Mandriva

One of the best resources for language support is the L10n section of the Mandriva Linux Web site. Mandriva Linux Localization Teams includes groups working on the following languages. However, there are many Linux localization projects independent of any of the major distributions.

  • (af) Afrikaans
  • (am) Amharic
  • (ar) Arabic
  • (az) Azerbaijani
  • (be) Belarussian
  • (bg) Bulgarian
  • (bn) Bengali
  • (br) Breton
  • (bs) Bosnian
  • (ca) Catalan
  • (cs) Czech
  • (cy) Cymraeg (Welsh)
  • (da) Danish
  • (de) German
  • (el) Greek
  • (eo) Esperanto
  • (es) Spanish
  • (et) Estonian
  • (eu) Euskara (Basque)
  • (fa) Farsi (Iranian)
  • (fi) Suomi (Finnish)
  • (fr) French
  • (fur) Furlan
  • (ga) Gaeilge (Irish Gaelic)
  • (gl) Galician
  • (he) Hebrew
  • (hi) Hindi
  • (hr) Croatian
  • (hu) Hungarian
  • (hy) Armenian
  • (id) Indonesian
  • (is) Icelandic
  • (it) Italian
  • (ja) Japanese
  • (ka) Georgian
  • (kn) Kannada
  • (ko) Korean
  • (ku) Kurdish
  • (ky) Kyrgyz
  • (lo) Lao
  • (lt) Lithuanian
  • (ltg) Latgalian
  • (lv) Latvian
  • (mk) Macedonian
  • (mn) Mongolian
  • (ms) Malay
  • (mt) Maltese
  • (nl) Dutch
  • (nb) Norwegian Bokmål
  • (nn) Norwegian Nynorsk
  • (pa_IN) Punjabi (in gurmukhi script)
  • (pl) Polish
  • (pt) Portuguese (Portugal)
  • (pt_BR) Brazilian Portuguese
  • (ro) Romanian
  • (ru) Russian
  • (sc) Sardinian
  • (sk) Slovakian
  • (sl) Slovenian
  • (sq) Albanian (Shqip)
  • (sr) Serbian
  • (sv) Swedish
  • (ta) Tamil
  • (tg) Tajiki
  • (th) Thai
  • (tk) Turkmen
  • (tl) Filipino (Tagalog)
  • (tr) Turkish
  • (uk) Ukrainian
  • (ur) Urdu
  • (uz) Uzbekian
  • (vi) Vietnamese
  • (wa) Walloon
  • (zh_CN) Chinese (simplified)
  • (zh_TW) Chinese (traditional)

IndLinux

Another good source is IndLinux

  • Bengali
  • Devanagari
  • Gujarati
  • Punjabi
  • Kannnada
  • Malayalam
  • Oriya
  • Tamil
  • Telugu
  • Dzongkha (Bhutan)
  • Assamese
  • Nepalese
  • Sinhala (Sri Lanka)

Other

Other Linux localization projects are listed on pages in this Wiki for the languages concerned. It would be useful to link to them from this page.

Here are some others.

External Links