Locale Es Uy
Use when working with the Spanish (Uruguay) locale (`es-UY`) — its endonym Español (Uruguay), 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 Spanish (Uruguay) locale — endonym Español (Uruguay), written in the Latin script, left-to-right (LTR).
Identifiers
- BCP 47 tag:
es-UY - ISO 639-1:
es - ISO 639-3:
spa - Script: Latn (Latin)
- Region: UY (Uruguay)
- Text direction: ltr — left-to-right (LTR)
Speakers (approximate)
- L1 (native): 3,400,000
- L2 (additional): 100,000
- L1+L2 (total): 3,500,000
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 Uruguayan-specific points.
- Address: voseo is used informally, much like in Argentina ("vos tenés"), and "tú" with voseo-like verb forms is also heard; "usted" is formal. Use "vos" forms for informal copy only if the brand wants a local feel.
- Vocabulary: shared with Rioplatense speech: "computadora", "celular", "auto", "ómnibus" or "bondi" (bus).
- Currency and formats: peso uruguayo (symbol "$U" in some contexts); decimal comma, period thousands separator.
- Tone: local copy is reserved and polite, less colloquial than Argentine copy.
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)