Skills on AI

Locale Gsw Fr

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Use when working with the Alsatian (France) locale (`gsw-FR`) — its endonym Elsässisch (Frankreich), 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 Alsatian (France) locale — endonym Elsässisch (Frankreich), written in the Latin script, left-to-right (LTR).

Identifiers

  • BCP 47 tag: gsw-FR
  • ISO 639-1: not assigned
  • ISO 639-3: gsw
  • Script: Latn (Latin)
  • Region: FR (France)
  • Text direction: ltr — left-to-right (LTR)

Speakers (approximate)

  • L1 (native): 900,000
  • L2 (additional): 100,000
  • L1+L2 (total): 1,000,000

Pluralization

CLDR plural categories for this locale: one, other (2 forms).

  • one — n = 1 (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

Alsatian (Elsässisch, Alsatian German) is an Alemannic German dialect spoken in Alsace. It has no single official orthography and is mostly spoken; written Alsatian is used in literature, theatre, cultural signs, and some education. Formal text in Alsace uses French or Standard German. This guidance is lower-confidence; have a native reviewer check it.

Translate ideas, not words.

  • Write the way Alsatians speak, not Standard German with a few word swaps. Alsatian differs in vocabulary, pronunciation, and grammar; it has no preterite (the perfect is used for the past) and it has its own article and pronoun forms.
  • French loanwords are common and natural in Alsatian. Use local words rather than Standard German calques.
  • Re-express idioms by meaning.

Orthography.

  • Several spelling proposals exist; ORTHAL (a standard proposed in the 1990s and 2000s) is widely cited for teaching. Choose one system and apply it consistently, and do not mix with Standard German spelling.
  • Quotation marks and number formats follow French practice in France: guillemets « », decimal comma, euro, day/month/year.

Register.

  • Informal address is "du"; the polite form varies by locality and speaker. Confirm the form for the audience with a native reviewer.

Common pitfalls

  • Writing Standard German and calling it Alsatian.
  • Mixing spelling systems.
  • Using Swiss or Bavarian dialect forms.

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.
  • Office pour la langue et les cultures d'Alsace (OLCA, https://www.olcalsace.org)

View locale-gsw-fr/SKILL.md on GitHub