Locale Fr Be

Reference data for the French (Belgium) locale — endonym Français (Belgique), written in the Latin script, left-to-right (LTR).

Identifiers

• BCP 47 tag: fr-BE
• ISO 639-1: fr
• ISO 639-3: fra
• Script: Latn (Latin)
• Region: BE (Belgium)
• Text direction: ltr — left-to-right (LTR)

Speakers (approximate)

• L1 (native): 4,500,000
• L2 (additional): 1,500,000
• L1+L2 (total): 6,000,000

Base locale

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

Pluralization

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

• one — i = 0,1 (e.g. 0, 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. 2~17, 100, 1000, 10000, …)

See Unicode Messageformat for writing plural messages using these categories.

Translating into this locale

Apply Locale Fr 001 with Belgian conventions. Belgium has three official languages (Dutch, French, and German), and institutional names exist in all of them.

• Numbers: Belgian French says "septante" (70) and "nonante" (90), not "soixante-dix" and "quatre-vingt-dix"; "quatre-vingts" (80) is used. Use these in numerals written as words, such as telephone-audio or accessibility scripts.
• Meals: "déjeuner" is breakfast, "dîner" is lunch, and "souper" is dinner, a Belgian pattern that differs from France.
• Vocabulary: "GSM" (mobile phone), "nonante", "septante", "drache" (heavy rain) are local; "savoir" is used for "pouvoir" in speech ("je ne sais pas venir"), which is not standard in writing.
• Institutions: keep official Belgian names and acronyms (SPF, SPW, ONSS) and bilingual place names in the official form.
• Feminization: the Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles promotes feminized job titles ("la directrice", "l'échevine").
• Formats: day/month/year, 24-hour clock, euro; check CLDR fr-BE for separators.

Common pitfalls

• Using "soixante-dix" and "quatre-vingt-dix" where Belgian audiences expect "septante" and "nonante".
• Translating Dutch place or institution names inconsistently.
• The general pitfalls in Locale Fr 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 Localization Style Guides, French (https://aka.ms/french-france-styleguide and https://aka.ms/french-canada-styleguide)
• Unicode CLDR locale data for number, date, and currency formats (https://cldr.unicode.org)