Wednesday, April 6, 2022

Unicode CLDR Version 41 Released!

[beta image] The Unicode CLDR Version 41 has been released, and has already been integrated into ICU.

CLDR v41 is a limited-submission release. Most work was on tooling, with only specified updates to the data, namely Phase 3 of the grammatical units of measurement project. The required grammar data for the Modern coverage level increased, with 40 locales adding an average of 4% new data each. Ukrainian grew the most, by 15.6%. The tooling changes are targeted at the v42 general submission release. They include a number of features and improvements such as progress meter widgets in the Survey Tool.

Finally, the Basic level has been modified to make it easier to onboard new languages, and easier for implementations to filter locale data based on coverage levels.

The following table shows the number of Languages/Locales in this version. (See the v41 Locale Coverage table for more information.)

Level Languages  Locales  Notes
Modern 89 361 Suitable for full UI internationalization
Moderate 13 32 Suitable for full “document content” internationalization, such as formats in a spreadsheet.
Basic 22 21 Suitable for locale selection, such as choice of language in mobile phone settings.
Total 124 414 Total of all languages/locales with ≥ Basic coverage.

Beyond the member organizations of the Unicode Consortium, many dedicated communities and individuals regularly contribute to updating their locales, including:
  • Modern: Cherokee, Cantonese, Scottish Gaelic,  Sorbian (Lower), Sorbian (Upper)
  • Moderate: Asturian [nearly Modern], Breton, Faroese, Fulah (Adlam), Kaingang, Nheengatu, Quechua, Sardinian
  • Basic: Bosnian (Cyrillic), Interlingua, Kabuverdianu, Māori, Romansh, Tajik, Tatar, Tongan, Uzbek (Cyrillic), Wolof
For details, see the Unicode CLDR v41 Release Note.
The next version of CLDR, version 42, is slated to start General Submission on May 18, 2022.

Unicode CLDR provides key building blocks for software supporting the world’s languages. CLDR data is used by all major software systems (including all mobile phones) for their software internationalization and localization, adapting software to the conventions of different languages.


Over 144,000 characters are available for adoption to help the Unicode Consortium’s work on digitally disadvantaged languages

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