Locale Es Bo

Reference data for the Spanish (Bolivia) locale — endonym Español (Bolivia), written in the Latin script, left-to-right (LTR).

Identifiers

• BCP 47 tag: es-BO
• ISO 639-1: es
• ISO 639-3: spa
• Script: Latn (Latin)
• Region: BO (Bolivia)
• Text direction: ltr — left-to-right (LTR)

Speakers (approximate)

• L1 (native): 8,000,000
• L2 (additional): 3,000,000
• L1+L2 (total): 11,000,000

Base locale

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

Pluralization

CLDR plural categories for this locale: one, many, other (3 forms).

• one — n = 1 (e.g. 1)
• many — e = 0 and i != 0 and i % 1000000 = 0 and v = 0 or e != 0..5 (e.g. 1000000, …)
• other — everything else (e.g. 0, 2~16, 100, 1000, …)

See Unicode Messageformat for writing plural messages using these categories.

Translating into this locale

Start from the general Spanish guidance in Locale Es 419 (grammar, register, and typography) and apply the following Bolivian-specific points.

• Address: "usted" is the safe default in products; informal address mixes "tú" and "vos" regionally (voseo is used in the east), so a neutral Latin American tú-or-usted text is the safest choice unless you know the audience.
• Vocabulary: shared with other Andean varieties; a small number of local words (for example "wawa" for baby, from Quechua) are regional and not suited to standard copy.
• Contact with Quechua and Aymara: place names and cultural terms should keep their local spelling; do not "correct" them to Spanish.
• Formats: use CLDR data for es-BO number, date, and currency formats (boliviano, symbol "Bs").

Common pitfalls

• Using the address form, vocabulary, or number format of another region; confirm each against the target country.
• Writing spoken slang or dialect spellings in standard text.
• The general pitfalls in Locale Es 001 (word order, capitalization, false friends, and agreement) also apply here.

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.
• Real Academia Española and ASALE, Diccionario panhispánico de dudas and Ortografía de la lengua española (2010), https://www.rae.es
• Unicode CLDR locale data for number, date, and currency formats of each Spanish region (https://cldr.unicode.org)