Locale De At
Use when working with the German (Austria) locale (`de-AT`) — its endonym Deutsch (Österreich), Latin script, left-to-right (LTR) direction, or spoken-population data. Reference data and translation guidance (register, grammar, idiom, typography) for this specific locale; see [[locale]] for general i18n/l10n concepts (BCP 47, plural rules, RTL) that apply across all locales.
Reference data for the German (Austria) locale — endonym Deutsch (Österreich), written in the Latin script, left-to-right (LTR).
Identifiers
- BCP 47 tag:
de-AT - ISO 639-1:
de - ISO 639-3:
deu - Script: Latn (Latin)
- Region: AT (Austria)
- Text direction: ltr — left-to-right (LTR)
Speakers (approximate)
- L1 (native): 8,800,000
- L2 (additional): 200,000
- L1+L2 (total): 9,000,000
Base locale
This is a regional variant of Locale De 001 (German), the base/macro locale for this language.
Pluralization
CLDR plural categories for this locale: one, other (2 forms).
- one —
i = 1 and v = 0(e.g. 1) - other — everything else (e.g. 0, 2~16, 100, 1000, …)
See Unicode Messageformat for writing plural messages using these categories.
Translating into this locale
Apply Locale De 001 with Austrian conventions. Austrian Standard German has official vocabulary documented in the Österreichisches Wörterbuch and in the Austrian federal legal terminology.
- Vocabulary: "Jänner" (not "Januar") for January in official and everyday use, "heuer" (this year), "Paradeiser" (tomato), "Erdäpfel" (potatoes), "Topfen" (quark), "Sackerl" (bag), "Matura" (school-leaving exam), "Karenz" (parental leave). Use the terms familiar to the audience; avoid Bavarian dialect.
- Orthography: the ß is used as in Germany; "Sie" is the default in business and "du" is common in informal and workplace contexts.
- Formats: day.month.year, 24-hour clock, decimal comma, euro; "Uhr" in time expressions; quotation marks
„…“. - Law and institutions: use official Austrian institution names (Bundeskanzleramt, Sozialversicherung, ÖNORM standards).
- Tone: polite and a bit more formal than in Germany; titles (Herr Magister, Frau Doktor) are used frequently and should be kept in addresses.
Common pitfalls
- Writing "Januar" in Austrian official copy.
- Dropping academic and professional titles in correspondence.
- The general pitfalls in Locale De 001 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.
- Österreichisches Wörterbuch (ÖWB)
- Microsoft Localization Style Guide, German (https://aka.ms/german-styleguide)