Locale Ar Ae

Reference data for the Arabic (United Arab Emirates) locale — endonym العربية (الإمارات), written in the Arabic script, right-to-left (RTL).

Identifiers

• BCP 47 tag: ar-AE
• ISO 639-1: ar
• ISO 639-3: ara
• Script: Arab (Arabic)
• Region: AE (United Arab Emirates)
• Text direction: rtl — right-to-left (RTL)

Speakers (approximate)

• L1 (native): 1,200,000
• L2 (additional): 3,000,000
• L1+L2 (total): 4,200,000

Set dir="rtl" for this locale (per Locale's text-direction guidance) rather than assuming left-to-right layout.

Base locale

This is a regional variant of Locale Ar 001 (Arabic), the base/macro locale for this language.

Pluralization

CLDR plural categories for this locale: zero, one, two, few, many, other (6 forms).

• zero — n = 0 (e.g. 0)
• one — n = 1 (e.g. 1)
• two — n = 2 (e.g. 2)
• few — n % 100 = 3..10 (e.g. 3~10, 103~110, 1003, …)
• many — n % 100 = 11..99 (e.g. 11~26, 111, 1011, …)
• other — everything else (e.g. 100~102, 200~202, 300~302, 400~402, …)

See Unicode Messageformat for writing plural messages using these categories.

Translating into this locale

Apply Locale Ar 001 with these United Arab Emirates conventions. Writing is MSA; the spoken Emirati dialect is Gulf Arabic. English is the common language of business, so Arabic UI often sits next to English.

• Currency and numbers: dirham (AED), written with the Arabic abbreviation د.إ or the code AED; follow CLDR ar-AE for the default digits and check what the product already uses.
• Calendar and weekend: Gregorian is standard, Hijri for religious dates. Government work weeks changed to a Saturday-Sunday weekend in 2022, with a shortened Friday; check the current rules before localizing schedules.
• Tone: formal and respectful; titles such as الشيخ and الشيخة, معالي and سعادة are used. Religious greetings (رمضان كريم, عيد مبارك) are expected at the right times.
• Names: keep emirate and local names in the standard Arabic spellings used by official bodies.

Common pitfalls

• Using Egyptian or Levantine dialect words in UAE copy.
• Applying a Friday-Saturday weekend assumption without checking.
• The general pitfalls in Locale Ar 001 (calques, passive overuse, bidirectional text, and gender agreement) also apply.

Learn more

• Locale for BCP 47 identifiers, locale-sensitive formatting, pluralization, and text-direction concepts that apply across all locales.
• Unicode Messageformat for writing plural/selection messages correctly for this locale's grammar.
• Microsoft Localization Style Guide, Arabic (https://aka.ms/arabic-styleguide)
• Unicode CLDR locale data for digits, calendars, and currency formats (https://cldr.unicode.org)