This project is a ruby implementation of ISO 639-1 alpha2 and ISO 3166-1. It includes definitions of all two letter language and region codes.
Languages are defined by ISO 639-1 alpha-2; that is the 2 letter lowercase language code.
These have been augmented to contain the plural rule names and the language's direction.
> ISO::Language.find('ru')
=> #<ISO::Language:0x007fe2ba43db50
@plural_rule_names=["one", "few", "many", "other"],
@direction="ltr",
@code="ru",
@name="Russian">
Regions are defined by ISO 3166-1; that is the 2 letter uppercase region code.
> ISO::Region.find('MX')
=> #<ISO::Region:0x007fe2ba070e50
@code="MX",
@name="Mexico">
Regions can also be defined by the UN M49 standard; that is the 3 digit region code.
> ISO::UN::Region.find('419')
=> #<ISO::Region:0x007fe2ba43db50
@code="419",
@name="Latin America and the Caribbean">
The combination of a language and a region is called a Tag :
> ISO::Tag.new('pt-BR')
=> #<ISO::Tag:0x007fe2bb005b90 @code="pt-BR",
@language=#<ISO::Language:0x007fe2ba256918
@plural_rule_names=["one", "other"],
@direction="ltr",
@code="pt",
@name="Portuguese">,
@region=#<ISO::Region:0x007fe2ba412e28
@code="BR",
@name="Brazil">>
You can check if a Tag is valid like so :
> ISO::Tag.new('pt-BR').valid? => true
> ISO::Tag.new('lolcat').valid? => false
Language and region names are internationalized - contribute to the I18n project directly on Locale for any changes.