[OSM-talk] Local language help

Oleksiy Muzalyev oleksiy.muzalyev at bluewin.ch
Thu May 10 08:43:25 UTC 2018


On 09.05.18 07:46, Jo wrote:
> The whole country has 3 official languages. In the north nl is the 
> official language, in the south fr. And a small area in the east is 
> de. Brussels is officially bilingual. Hence all names there will be a 
> combination of fr - nl.
>
> Normally I would expect Belgium to not have default_language set. You 
> may have to keep a list of countries where it only makes sense to look 
> at the next smaller geographic regions.
>
> I expect the same goes for Switzerland (whole country 3-4 official 
> languages, but at the next geographic level it is clear which language 
> is spoken/official for which region).
>
> I think in most multilingual countries the regions are not so clearly 
> defined.
>
> Jo

Hello Jo and Yuri,

Here is the text of the article 4 of the Belgian constitution [1]

"Article 4
Belgium comprises four linguistic regions: the Dutch-speaking region, 
the French-
speaking region, the bilingual region of Brussels-Capital and the 
German-speaking region.
Each municipality of the Kingdom forms part of one of these linguistic 
regions."

In the Swiss constitution [2] it is stated directly that there are four 
national languages. It is also the article 4:

"Art. 4 National languages
The National Languages are German, French, Italian, and Romansh."

It is not a light question, - which language is the default one for 
these countries. In my opinion, following these official texts is the 
best solution.

[1] 
https://www.dekamer.be/kvvcr/pdf_sections/publications/constitution/GrondwetUK.pdf
[2] 
https://www.admin.ch/opc/en/classified-compilation/19995395/index.html#a4

Best regards,
Oleksiy



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