Checklist: Left-to-Right (LTR) Languages

Left-to-Right (LTR) Languages are written and read from left to right, and localization for billions of these native speakers is usual default for software localization.

Localization for LTR languages is often taken as a given, as English has for far too long been considered the default language for digital content. However, it is crucial to plan for RTL (right-to-left) localization in the early stages of product design and kept in mind that it involves more than just text translation. Spatial design changes are necessary when localizing for RTL languages (including navigation, visuals, general layout, numerics, etc).

Enabling Unicode Bidi (or bidirectional script support) should be on your to-do list at the very beginning of the product development process.

Bidi Unicode support

Bidirectional script support means that both writing scripts with different directions (left-to-right and right-to-left) are supported. Unicode’s bidirectional (or Bidi) support includes not just letters, but also numbers, formatting characters, special characters, paragraph and heading levels.

Script or writing systems of languages can have a different direction of writing, reading and interpreting. While languages such as English, German and Spanish have the left-to-right direction, others are written and read from right to left or in different variants of vertical writing.

Although there are just 12 languages with RTL writing scripts, LTR languages boast with larger numbers.

Which are Right-to-Left Languages?

The left-to-right languages are available in the list below.

ISO 639-2 Code Language		ISO 639-2 Code Language
aa	Afar	lij	Ligurian
ab	Abkhazian	lmo	Lombard
af	Afrikaans	ln	Lingala
ak	Akan	lo	Laotian
als	Alemannic	lzz	Laz
am	Amharic	lt	Lithuanian
an	Aragonese	lv	Latvian
ang	Angal	map-bms	Banyumasan
ang	Anglo-Saxon / Old English	mg	Malagasy
as	Assamese	man	Mandarin
ast	Asturian	mh	Marshallese
av	Avar	mi	Maori
awa	Awadhi	min	Minangkabau
ay	Aymara	mk	Macedonian
az	Azerbaijani	ml	Malayalam
ba	Bashkir	mn	Mongolian
bar	Bavarian	mo	Moldovan
bat-smg	Samogitian	mr	Marathi
bcl	Bikol	ms	Malay
be	Belarusian	mt	Maltese
be-x-old	Belarusian (Taraškievica)	mus	Creek / Muskogee
bg	Bulgarian	mwl	Mirandese
bh	Bihari	my	Burmese
bi	Bislama	na	Nauruan
bm	Bambara	nah	Nahuatl
bn	Bengali	nap	Neapolitan
bo	Tibetan	nd	North Ndebele
bpy	Bishnupriya Manipuri	nds	Low German / Low Saxon
br	Breton	nds-nl	Dutch Low Saxon
bs	Bosnian	ne	Nepali
bug	Buginese	new	Newar
bxr	Buriat (Russia)	ng	Ndonga
ca	Catalan	nl	Dutch
cdo	Min Dong Chinese	nn	Norwegian Nynorsk
ce	Chechen	no	Norwegian
ceb	Cebuano	nr	South Ndebele
ch	Chamorro	nso	Northern Sotho
cho	Choctaw	nrm	Norman
chr	Cherokee	nv	Navajo
chy	Cheyenne	ny	Chichewa
co	Corsican	oc	Occitan
cr	Cree	oj	Ojibwa
cs	Czech	om	Oromo
csb	Kashubian	or	Oriya
cu	Old Church Slavonic / Old Bulgarian	os	Ossetian / Ossetic
cv	Chuvash	pa	Panjabi / Punjabi
cy	Welsh	pag	Pangasinan
da	Danish	pam	Kapampangan
de	German	pap	Papiamentu
diq	Dimli	pdc	Pennsylvania German
dsb	Lower Sorbian	pi	Pali
dz	Dzongkha	pih	Norfolk
ee	Ewe	pl	Polish
el	Greek	pms	Piedmontese
en	English	pt	Portuguese
eo	Esperanto	qu	Quechua
es	Spanish	rm	Raeto Romance
et	Estonian	rmy	Romani
eu	Basque	rn	Kirundi
ext	Extremaduran	ro	Romanian
ff	Peul	roa-rup	Aromanian
fi	Finnish	ru	Russian
fiu-vro	Võro	rw	Rwandi
fj	Fijian	sa	Sanskrit
fo	Faroese	sc	Sardinian
fr	French	scn	Sicilian
frp	Arpitan / Franco-Provençal	sco	Scots
fur	Friulian	sd	Sindhi
fy	West Frisian	se	Northern Sami
ga	Irish	sg	Sango
gan	Gan Chinese	sh	Serbo-Croatian
gbm	Garhwali	si	Sinhalese
gd	Scottish Gaelic	simple	Simple English
gil	Gilbertese	sk	Slovak
gl	Galician	sl	Slovenian
gn	Guarani	sm	Samoan
got	Gothic	sn	Shona
gu	Gujarati	so	Somalia
gv	Manx	sq	Albanian
hak	Hakka Chinese	sr	Serbian
haw	Hawaiian	ss	Swati
hi	Hindi	st	Southern Sotho
ho	Hiri Motu	su	Sundanese
hr	Croatian	sv	Swedish
ht	Haitian	sw	Swahili
hu	Hungarian	ta	Tamil
hy	Armenian	te	Telugu
hz	Herero	tet	Tetum
ia	Interlingua	tg	Tajik
id	Indonesian	th	Thai
ie	Interlingue	ti	Tigrinya
ig	Igbo	tk	Turkmen
ii	Sichuan Yi	tl	Tagalog
ik	Inupiak	tlh	Klingon
ilo	Ilokano	tn	Tswana
inh	Ingush	to	Tonga
io	Ido	tpi	Tok Pisin
is	Icelandic	tr	Turkish
it	Italian	ts	Tsonga
iu	Inuktitut	tt	Tatar
ja	Japanese	tum	Tumbuka
jbo	Lojban	tw	Twi
jv	Javanese	ty	Tahitian
ka	Georgian	udm	Udmurt
kg	Kongo	ug	Uyghur
ki	Kikuyu	uk	Ukrainian
kj	Kuanyama	uz	Uzbek
kk	Kazakh	ve	Venda
kl	Greenlandic	vi	Vietnamese
km	Cambodian	vec	Venetian
kn	Kannada	vls	West Flemish
ko	Korean	vo	Volapük
kr	Kanuri	wa	Walloon
ksh	Ripuarian	war	Waray / Samar-Leyte Visayan
kv	Komi	wo	Wolof
kw	Cornish	xal	Kalmyk
ky	Kirghiz	xh	Xhosa
la	Latin	xmf	Megrelian
lad	Ladino / Judeo-Spanish	yo	Yoruba
lan	Lango	za	Zhuang
lb	Luxembourgish	zh	Chinese
lg	Ganda	zh-classical	Classical Chinese
li	Limburgian	zh-min-nan	Minnan
		zh-yue	Cantonese
		zu	Zulu