Locale It Ch
Use when working with the Italian (Switzerland) locale (`it-CH`) — its endonym Italiano (Svizzera), 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 Italian (Switzerland) locale — endonym Italiano (Svizzera), written in the Latin script, left-to-right (LTR).
Identifiers
- BCP 47 tag:
it-CH - ISO 639-1:
it - ISO 639-3:
ita - Script: Latn (Latin)
- Region: CH (Switzerland)
- Text direction: ltr — left-to-right (LTR)
Speakers (approximate)
- L1 (native): 700,000
- L2 (additional): 300,000
- L1+L2 (total): 1,000,000
Base locale
This is a regional variant of Locale It 001 (Italian), the base/macro locale for this language.
Pluralization
CLDR plural categories for this locale: one, many, other (3 forms).
- one —
i = 1 and v = 0(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
Apply Locale It 001 with Swiss Italian conventions. Italian is one of four national languages and is mainly spoken in Ticino and southern Graubünden.
- Terminology: Swiss federal Italian is translated from German and French sources and follows the Federal Chancellery's terminology (for example "Confederazione", "Consiglio federale", "cantone", "Consiglio nazionale"). Use the official forms.
- Currency and formats: Swiss franc (CHF); check CLDR
it-CHfor the decimal and grouping separators, which differ from Italy. - Vocabulary: Swiss Italian has some Germanisms and Gallicisms ("natel" for mobile phone in older usage) that are local; prefer standard terms in new text unless the project glossary uses them.
- No ß or German-specific letters: all Swiss languages use the standard Latin alphabet.
Common pitfalls
- Using Italian-Italian administrative terms for Swiss institutions.
- Using euro formats in Swiss material.
- The general pitfalls in Locale It 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.
- Swiss Federal Chancellery terminology database termdat (https://www.termdat.ch)
- Unicode CLDR locale data for
it-CH(https://cldr.unicode.org)