Locale En Za
Use when working with the English (South Africa) locale (`en-ZA`) — its endonym English (South Africa), 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 English (South Africa) locale — endonym English (South Africa), written in the Latin script, left-to-right (LTR).
Identifiers
- BCP 47 tag:
en-ZA - ISO 639-1:
en - ISO 639-3:
eng - Script: Latn (Latin)
- Region: ZA (South Africa)
- Text direction: ltr — left-to-right (LTR)
Speakers (approximate)
- L1 (native): 4,900,000
- L2 (additional): 11,000,000
- L1+L2 (total): 15,900,000
Base locale
This is a regional variant of Locale En 001 (English), 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 En 001 and use these South African conventions. English is one of eleven official languages and most readers also speak another.
- Spelling: British forms (-ise, -our, -re).
- Dates and numbers: CLDR
en-ZAuses a decimal comma and space for thousands; the rand symbol is "R" before the amount; dates are commonly YYYY-MM-DD or day/month/year, so write the month in words where clarity matters. - Local vocabulary: "robot" (traffic light), "bakkie" (pickup truck), "braai" (barbecue), and "lekker" are everyday words but informal; in formal text, use the standard term.
- Multilingual context: keep names of people and places in their original spelling, and take care with cultural and historical terms.
Common pitfalls
- Using American spelling and decimal points where the local format is a comma.
- Placing Afrikaans or Zulu slang into formal English copy without need.
- The general pitfalls in Locale En 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.
- Microsoft Writing Style Guide (https://learn.microsoft.com/style-guide/welcome/)
- Unicode CLDR locale data for date, number, and currency formats (https://cldr.unicode.org)