Is there any way to know the language by default by country on Locale?

Question

I have these lines of code:

Locale[] cosas = Locale.getAvailableLocales();

for (int i = 0; i < cosas.length; i++) {
    log.info(cosas[i]);
}

I obtain this list:

ms_MY
ar_QA
is_IS
fi_FI
pl
en_MT
it_CH
nl_BE
ar_SA
ar_IQ
es_PR
es_CL
fi
de_AT
da
en_GB
es_PA
sr
ar_YE
mk_MK
mk
en_CA
vi_VN
nl_NL
es_US
zh_CN
es_HN
en_US
fr
th
ar
ar_MA
lv
de
in_ID
hr
en_ZA
ko_KR
ar_TN
in
ja
sr_RS
be_BY
zh_TW
ar_SD
pt
is
ja_JP_JP_#u-ca-japanese
es_BO
ar_DZ
ms
es_AR
ar_AE
fr_CA
sl
es
lt_LT
sr_ME_#Latn
ar_SY
ru_RU
fr_BE
es_ES
bg
iw_IL
sv
en
iw
da_DK
es_CR
zh_HK
zh
ca_ES
th_TH
uk_UA
es_DO
es_VE
pl_PL
ar_LY
ar_JO
it
uk
hu_HU
ga
es_GT
es_PY
bg_BG
hr_HR
sr_BA_#Latn
ro_RO
fr_LU
no
lt
en_SG
es_EC
sr_BA
es_NI
sk
ru
mt
es_SV
nl
hi_IN
et
el_GR
sl_SI
it_IT
ja_JP
de_LU
fr_CH
mt_MT
ar_BH
sq
vi
sr_ME
pt_BR
no_NO
el
de_CH
zh_SG
ar_KW
ar_EG
ga_IE
es_PE
cs_CZ
tr_TR
cs
es_UY
en_IE
en_IN
ar_OM
sr_CS
ca
be
sr__#Latn
ko
sq_AL
pt_PT
lv_LV
sr_RS_#Latn
sk_SK
es_MX
en_AU
no_NO_NY
en_NZ
sv_SE
ro
ar_LB
de_DE
th_TH_TH_#u-nu-thai
tr
es_CO
en_PH
et_EE
el_CY
hu
fr_FR

For example, for Spain as a country, the list contains two locales: es_ES and ca_ES, that is not the same for the Spanish language, of course.

Then, my question is, how can I know which one is the language by default for a country? It is possible to construct the locale just by the language, but I need to pass by parameter for the method only the country and now I have this code to assign a language by default:

if (language.equals("")) {
    switch (country) {
        case "CN":
            language = "zh";
            break;
        case "ES":
            language = "es";
            break;
        case "US":
            language = "en";
            break;
        case "JP":
            language = "ja";
            break;
        default:
            country = "";
            break;
        }
    }

if (language.equals("") && country.equals("")) {
    newLocale = new Locale("es", "ES");
} else {
    newLocale = new Locale(language, country);
}

RESOURCE_BUNDLE = ResourceBundle.getBundle(BUNDLE_NAME, newLocale);

But I need to extend this switch for a lot of languages more. So, I prefer to have a clear way to assign the language by default for a country.

I found out a solution on this link, but I tried it out and it is not right (for example, for Spain, it returns as default ca-ES, and it is not). Does anybody think it is really possible to obtain the country by code? Any idea? Thank you so much.

Answer 1

You can get the language for a locale like this:

String lang = Locale.getDefault().getISO3Language();

You can also get the country for a locale:

String country = Locale.getDefault().getISO3Country();

Many countries have more than one language. For example, there is a Canadian French and Canadian English locale.

There is not really a 'default' language for any country. The JVM will use the default local of the machine it is on, but the language and country also can be set using the -Duser.country -Duser.languagevariables.

You can also change the default locale programmatically using arbitrary combinations of country and language. For example, this works:

    Locale l = new Locale("Ca", "Cyrl");
    Locale.setDefault(l);