BCP 47 language tags

Packages and lexical models may reference a BCP 47 language tag. A BCP 47 tag is a standard way of referencing a language, used widely in the computer industry. Keyman uses BCP 47 tags in a number of areas, including:

• providing language metadata about installed keyboards to the operating system and to applications, so that, for example, spell checking has the correct language, through package metadata
• linking lexical models to keyboard layouts
• facilitating searches for keyboards and lexical models on the Keyman site, through a .keyboard_info file

A BCP 47 language tag is made up of multiple subtags. There are many possible subtags, but only three types are currently used in most places in Keyman Developer:

• language subtag
• script subtag
• region subtag

BCP 47 tags are case insensitive, but there are conventions for casing which you should use for readability; see the subtag descriptions for details.

The following are all examples of valid BCP 47 tags:

• en: English
• en-US: English, in United States
• km-Khmr-KH: Khmer, written in the Khmer script, in Cambodia
• km-fonipa: Khmer, transcribed in IPA

The language subtag

The only required option is the Language subtag, which is an ISO 639-1 or ISO 639-3 code.

ISO 639-1 tags are a two-letter code. ISO 639-3 tags are a three-letter code. First, try to find your language on the list of two-letter ISO 639-1 codes. This Wikipedia page lists all of the two-letter codes.

If you can't find a two-letter code, you'll need to find the closest three-letter code. You can use Glottolog to search for your language, and it will give you an appropriate code. In this example, I searched Glottolog for “Saanich” (name of the First Nations that speak SENĆOŦEN) and found str as the code for all Straits Salish languages.

The Language subtag is conventionally written in lower case.

The next two subtags are optional, however, they allow you to be more specific about your language.

The script subtag

The Script subtag allows you to specify the writing system used in your language model or keyboard. If your language only uses one writing system, omit the Script subtag.

Otherwise, in cases where a language can be written in many different writing systems, you can choose the four letter ISO 15924 script tag that your keyboard or lexical model produces.

For example, Plains Cree can either be written in standard Roman orthography, a Latin derived script, or it can be written in syllabics, which is part of the Canadian Aboriginal syllabics family of writing systems. If I wrote a keyboard or lexical model that produced syllabics, I would choose Cans, as that is the ISO 15924 tag for Canadian Aboriginal syllabics.

The Script subtag is conventionally written in title case - first letter capitalized.

The region subtag

The Region subtag allows you to specify the region your language or dialect is spoken in. If your language is only spoken in one region, omit the Region subtag.

Otherwise, some languages vary between different regions and countries. In our example, SENĆOŦEN describes the language that covers entire W̱SÁNEĆ region, so this field may be left blank.

However, large languages, like English, Spanish, or French have quite different vocabulary and even different grammatical rules from region to region and country to country. For example, the variety of Spanish spoken in Spain regularly uses words that are uncommon or even vulgar in both in Mexico, and in Latin America. Additionally, regions may have vocabulary that doesn't exist in the other regions where the language is spoken.

If I were working with a language specific to one country, I would use the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code for the region subtag. For example, ES for Spain or MX for Mexico.

However, if I were working with Latin American Spanish (a group of countries), I would need to specify Latin America's UN M49 region code. For Latin America, its code is 419. My lexical model would not suggest words that are common in Spain, but vulgar in Latin America, however it would predict words like "pupupsas" and "chuchitos", which are words that are uncommon in both Spain and Mexico.

Another common UN M49 region code is 001 for the whole world.

Alphabetic region subtags are conventionally written in upper case.