Languages
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 | ||
| Rwanda | Kinyarwanda French English |
living languages: 3 Source: Ethnologue | |
| Thailand | Thai | living languages: 74 | |
| Uruguay | Spanish |
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.
- Pashtu (Pashto) Localization Project Afghanistan and the border areas of Pakistan
- Soyombo Mongolian Linux Cyrillic now, traditional Mongolian alphabet to come
- Rwandan distribution of Linux in Kinyarwanda language
- Wazobia Linux in English, Hausa, Igbo, Yoruba
- Thai Linux (in Thai)
- Bengalinux
- Sinhala Linux සිංහල
External Links
- Ethnologue Data on all known human languages
- Omniglot database on languages
- ISO two-letter language codes