Alternative way to determine if a CultureInfo uses a specific language?

Question

I need a way to detect if the Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture uses a specific language.

In particular, I need to detect if the CurrentCulture CultureInfo object supports/uses/is "English", regardless of the country/region -- but, there is a possibility I would want to check for other languages, also.

I know that any English language CultureInfo objects' Names will be prefixed with en- and then the region (US, GB etc.) - according to MSDN's Table of Language Culture Name and Codes.

So I could simply check if the current culture name "starts with" the en- prefix:

var currentCultureName = Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture.Name;
if (currentCultureName.StartsWith("en-"))
{
    // We have an English language culture
}

EDIT: Similarly (as Evk pointed out) - if I were to use the TwoLetterISOLanguageName, I could end up with the same result:

var twoLetterISOLanguageName =
                          Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture.TwoLetterISOLanguageName;

if (twoLetterISOLanguageName.Equals("en", StringComparison.InvariantCultureIgnoreCase))
{
    // We have an English language culture
}

---

Is there an alternative, or more type-safe way of checking for this, with the possibililty of needing to detect other languages (e.g. French, German etc.)? - in order to save having to write a potentially large switch statement?

Or, is what I'm using above - and using a switch statement the best approach?

Thanks in advance for your help and suggestions :)

Answer 1

There is no really a very elegant solution, what you have suggested is not bad for a few languages. You could use CultureInfo.Parent Property which will return the neutral culture.

There are some complications when there is a hierarchy where multiple parent languages available (eg: some Traditional Chinese , Taiwan). But this should be fine for DE, FR and EN.

var neutralCulture = Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture.Parent.Name;

if (neutralCulture.Equals("en", StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase))
{
    // We have an English language culture
}
else if (neutralCulture.Equals("fr", StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase))
{
    // We have a French language culture
}
else if (neutralCulture.Equals("de", StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase))
{
    // We have a German language culture
}