Article
11/18/2011

CultureInfo Class

Microsoft Silverlight will reach end of support after October 2021. Learn more.

Provides information about a specific culture. The information includes the names for the culture, the writing system, the calendar used, the formatting used for numbers and dates, and the order of sorted strings.

Inheritance Hierarchy

System.Object
System.Globalization.CultureInfo

Namespace: System.Globalization
Assembly: mscorlib (in mscorlib.dll)

Syntax

'Declaration
<ComVisibleAttribute(True)> _
Public Class CultureInfo _
    Implements IFormatProvider

[ComVisibleAttribute(true)]
public class CultureInfo : IFormatProvider

The CultureInfo type exposes the following members.

Constructors

	Name	Description
	CultureInfo	Initializes a new instance of the CultureInfo class based on the culture specified by name.

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Properties

	Name	Description
	Calendar	Gets the default calendar used by the culture.
	CompareInfo	Gets the CompareInfo object that defines how to compare strings for the culture.
	CurrentCulture	Gets the CultureInfo object that represents the culture used by the current thread.
	CurrentUICulture	Gets the CultureInfo object that represents the current culture used by the Resource Manager to look up culture-specific resources at run time.
	DateTimeFormat	Gets or sets a DateTimeFormatInfo object that defines the culturally appropriate format for converting dates and times to strings.
	DisplayName	Gets the culture name in the format "language (country/region)" in the language of the localized version of .NET Framework.
	EnglishName	Gets the culture name in the format "language (country/region)" in English.
	InvariantCulture	Gets the CultureInfo that is culture-independent (invariant).
	IsNeutralCulture	Gets a value indicating whether the current CultureInfo object represents a neutral culture.
	IsReadOnly	Gets a value indicating whether the current CultureInfo object is read-only.
	Name	Gets the culture name in the format "languagecode-country/regioncode".
	NativeName	Gets the culture's native name, which consists of the language, the country/region, and the optional script, that the culture is set to display.
	NumberFormat	Gets or sets a NumberFormatInfo object that defines the culturally appropriate format for converting numbers, currency values, and percentages to strings.
	OptionalCalendars	Gets the list of calendars that can be used by this culture.
	Parent	Gets the CultureInfo that represents the parent culture of the current CultureInfo.
	TextInfo	Gets the TextInfo object that defines the writing system associated with the culture.
	TwoLetterISOLanguageName	Gets the ISO 639-1 two-letter code for the language of the current CultureInfo.

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Methods

	Name	Description
	Clone	Creates a copy of the current CultureInfo object.
	Equals	Determines whether the specified object is the same culture as this CultureInfo object. (Overrides Object.Equals(Object).)
	Finalize	Allows an object to try to free resources and perform other cleanup operations before the Object is reclaimed by garbage collection. (Inherited from Object.)
	GetFormat	Gets an object that defines how to format the specified type.
	GetHashCode	Serves as a hash function for the current CultureInfo, suitable for hashing algorithms and data structures, such as a hash table. (Overrides Object.GetHashCode().)
	GetType	Gets the Type of the current instance. (Inherited from Object.)
	MemberwiseClone	Creates a shallow copy of the current Object. (Inherited from Object.)
	ReadOnly	Returns a read-only wrapper around the specified CultureInfo object.
	ToString	Returns a string containing the name of the current CultureInfo object in the format "languagecode-country/regioncode". (Overrides Object.ToString().)

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Remarks

The CultureInfo class provides culture-specific information, such as the associated language, sublanguage, country/region, calendar, and cultural conventions. This class also provides access to culture-specific instances of DateTimeFormatInfo, NumberFormatInfo, CompareInfo, and TextInfo. These objects contain the information required for culture-specific operations, such as casing, formatting dates and numbers, and comparing strings.

The members of the String class either directly or indirectly use this class to obtain information about the default culture.

Note:
CultureInfo objects other than CultureInfo.InvariantCulture retrieve their data from the operating system. As a result, the values of individual CultureInfo properties may differ not only by operating system, but also within versions of the same operating system.

Culture Names and Identifiers

The CultureInfo class specifies a unique name for each culture, based on RFC 4646. The name is a combination of an ISO 639 two-letter lowercase culture code associated with a language and an ISO 3166 two-letter uppercase subculture code associated with a country or region. The format for the culture name is "languagecode-country/regioncode", where languagecode is the language code and country/regioncode is the subculture code. Examples include "ja-JP" for Japanese (Japan) and "en-US" for English (United States). In cases where a two-letter language code is not available, a three-letter code derived from ISO 639-2 is used.

Some culture names also specify an ISO 15924 script. For example, "-Cyrl" specifies the Cyrillic script and "-Latn" specifies the Latin script. A culture name including a script is rendered using the pattern "languagecode-scripttag-country/regioncode". An example of this type of culture name is "uz-Cyrl-UZ" for Uzbek (Uzbekistan, Cyrillic).

A neutral culture (a culture defined by a language with no specific country/region) is specified by the two-letter lowercase language code only. For example, "fr" specifies the neutral culture for French, and "de" specifies the neutral culture for German.

Note:
There are two culture names that contradict this rule. The cultures "zh-Hans" (Simplified Chinese) and "zh-Hant" (Traditional Chinese) are neutral cultures.

The following table lists the predefined culture names that are recognized by the .NET Framework for Silverlight and that can be used when instantiating a CultureInfo object. However, because the .NET Framework for Silverlight retrieves culture information from the operating system, the availability of cultural information may vary depending on the platform and operating system version.

Culture/language name	Culture
"" (empty string)	Invariant culture
af	Afrikaans
af-ZA	Afrikaans (South Africa)
sq	Albanian
sq-AL	Albanian (Albania)
ar	Arabic
ar-DZ	Arabic (Algeria)
ar-BH	Arabic (Bahrain)
ar-EG	Arabic (Egypt)
ar-IQ	Arabic (Iraq)
ar-JO	Arabic (Jordan)
ar-KW	Arabic (Kuwait)
ar-LB	Arabic (Lebanon)
ar-LY	Arabic (Libya)
ar-MA	Arabic (Morocco)
ar-OM	Arabic (Oman)
ar-QA	Arabic (Qatar)
ar-SA	Arabic (Saudi Arabia)
ar-SY	Arabic (Syria)
ar-TN	Arabic (Tunisia)
ar-AE	Arabic (U.A.E.)
ar-YE	Arabic (Yemen)
hy	Armenian
hy-AM	Armenian (Armenia)
az	Azeri
az-Cyrl-AZ	Azeri (Azerbaijan, Cyrillic)
az-Latn-AZ	Azeri (Azerbaijan, Latin)
eu	Basque
eu-ES	Basque (Basque)
be	Belarusian
be-BY	Belarusian (Belarus)
bg	Bulgarian
bg-BG	Bulgarian (Bulgaria)
ca	Catalan
ca-ES	Catalan (Catalan)
zh-HK	Chinese (Hong Kong SAR, PRC)
zh-MO	Chinese (Macao SAR)
zh-CN	Chinese (PRC)
zh-Hans	Chinese (Simplified)
zh-SG	Chinese (Singapore)
zh-TW	Chinese (Taiwan)
zh-Hant	Chinese (Traditional)
hr	Croatian
hr-BA	Croatian (Bosnia and Herzegovina)
hr-HR	Croatian (Croatia)
cs	Czech
cs-CZ	Czech (Czech Republic)
da	Danish
da-DK	Danish (Denmark)
dv	Divehi
dv-MV	Divehi (Maldives)
nl	Dutch
nl-BE	Dutch (Belgium)
nl-NL	Dutch (Netherlands)
en	English
en-AU	English (Australia)
en-BZ	English (Belize)
en-CA	English (Canada)
en-029	English (Caribbean)
en-IE	English (Ireland)
en-JM	English (Jamaica)
en-NZ	English (New Zealand)
en-PH	English (Philippines)
en-ZA	English (South Africa
en-TT	English (Trinidad and Tobago)
en-GB	English (United Kingdom)
en-US	English (United States)
en-ZW	English (Zimbabwe)
et	Estonian
et-EE	Estonian (Estonia)
fo	Faroese
fo-FO	Faroese (Faroe Islands)
fa	Farsi
fa-IR	Farsi (Iran)
fi	Finnish
fi-FI	Finnish (Finland)
fr	French
fr-BE	French (Belgium)
fr-CA	French (Canada)
fr-FR	French (France)
fr-LU	French (Luxembourg)
fr-MC	French (Monaco)
fr-CH	French (Switzerland)
gl	Galician
gl-ES	Galician (Spain)
ka	Georgian
ka-GE	Georgian (Georgia)
de	German
de-AT	German (Austria)
de-DE	German (Germany)
de-DE_phoneb	German (Germany, phone book sort)
de-LI	German (Liechtenstein)
de-LU	German (Luxembourg)
de-CH	German (Switzerland)
el	Greek
el-GR	Greek (Greece)
gu	Gujarati
gu-IN	Gujarati (India)
he	Hebrew
he-IL	Hebrew (Israel)
hi	Hindi
hi-IN	Hindi (India)
hu	Hungarian
hu-HU	Hungarian (Hungary)
is	Icelandic
is-IS	Icelandic (Iceland)
id	Indonesian
id-ID	Indonesian (Indonesia)
it	Italian
it-IT	Italian (Italy)
it-CH	Italian (Switzerland)
ja	Japanese
ja-JP	Japanese (Japan)
kn	Kannada
kn-IN	Kannada (India)
kk	Kazakh
kk-KZ	Kazakh (Kazakhstan)
kok	Konkani
kok-IN	Konkani (India)
ko	Korean
ko-KR	Korean (Korea)
ky	Kyrgyz
ky-KG	Kyrgyz (Kyrgyzstan)
lv	Latvian
lv-LV	Latvian (Latvia)
lt	Lithuanian
lt-LT	Lithuanian (Lithuania)
mk	Macedonian
mk-MK	Macedonian (Macedonia, FYROM)
ms	Malay
ms-BN	Malay (Brunei Darussalam)
ms-MY	Malay (Malaysia)
mr	Marathi
mr-IN	Marathi (India)
mn	Mongolian
mn-MN	Mongolian (Mongolia)
no	Norwegian
nb-NO	Norwegian (Bokmål, Norway)
nn-NO	Norwegian (Nynorsk, Norway)
pl	Polish
pl-PL	Polish (Poland)
pt	Portuguese
pt-BR	Portuguese (Brazil)
pt-PT	Portuguese (Portugal)
pa	Punjabi
pa-IN	Punjabi (India)
ro	Romanian
ro-RO	Romanian (Romania)
ru	Russian
ru-RU	Russian (Russia)
sa	Sanskrit
sa-IN	Sanskrit (India)
sr-Cyrl-CS	Serbian (Serbia, Cyrillic)
sr-Latn-CS	Serbian (Serbia, Latin)
sk	Slovak
sk-SK	Slovak (Slovakia)
sl	Slovenian
sl-SI	Slovenian (Slovenia)
es	Spanish
es-AR	Spanish (Argentina)
es-BO	Spanish (Bolivia)
es-CL	Spanish (Chile)
es-CO	Spanish (Colombia)
es-CR	Spanish (Costa Rica)
es-DO	Spanish (Dominican Republic)
es-EC	Spanish (Ecuador)
es-SV	Spanish (El Salvador)
es-GT	Spanish (Guatemala)
es-HN	Spanish (Honduras)
es-MX	Spanish (Mexico)
es-NI	Spanish (Nicaragua)
es-PA	Spanish (Panama)
es-PY	Spanish (Paraguay)
es-PE	Spanish (Peru)
es-PR	Spanish (Puerto Rico)
es-ES	Spanish (Spain)
es-ES_tradnl	Span (Span, Traditional Sort)
es-UY	Spanish (Uruguay)
es-VE	Spanish (Venezuela)
sw	Swahili
sw-KE	Swahili (Kenya)
sv	Swedish
sv-FI	Swedish (Finland)
sv-SE	Swedish (Sweden)
syr	Syriac
syr-SY	Syriac (Syria)
ta	Tamil
ta-IN	Tamil (India)
tt	Tatar
tt-RU	Tatar (Russia)
te	Telugu
te-IN	Telugu (India)
th	Thai
th-TH	Thai (Thailand)
tr	Turkish
tr-TR	Turkish (Turkey)
uk	Ukrainian
uk-UA	Ukrainian (Ukraine)
ur	Urdu
ur-PK	Urdu (Pakistan)
uz	Uzbek
uz-Cyrl-UZ	Uzbek (Uzbekistan, Cyrillic)
uz-Latn-UZ	Uzbek (Uzbekistan, Latin)
vi	Vietnamese
vi-VN	Vietnamese (Vietnam)

Several distinct names are closely associated with a culture, notably the names associated with the following class members:

CultureInfo.ToString

Typically, this is a "normalized" version of the string that is passed to the CultureInfo class constructor. Its language component is always lowercased and its country/region component is always uppercased.
CultureInfo.Name

This name represents the language and country/region component of the CultureInfo object together with a script, if one is present. It does not include sort order information if the CultureInfo object was instantiated with a string that defines a particular sort order.
CompareInfo.Name

This name represents the language and country/region component together with a component script, if one is present, and an indication of the sort order, if it is relevant.

Invariant, Neutral, and Specific Cultures

The cultures are generally grouped into three sets: invariant cultures, neutral cultures, and specific cultures.

An invariant culture is culture-insensitive. Your application specifies the invariant culture by name using an empty string ("") or by its identifier. InvariantCulture defines an instance of the invariant culture. It is associated with the English language but not with any country/region. It is used in almost any method in the System.Globalization namespace that requires a culture.

A neutral culture is a culture that is associated with a language but not with a country/region. A specific culture is a culture that is associated with a language and a country/region. For example, "fr" is a neutral culture and "fr-FR" is a specific culture. Note that "zh-Hans" (Simplified Chinese) and "zh-Hant" (Traditional Chinese) are neutral cultures.

Creating an instance of a CompareInfo class for a neutral culture is not recommended because the data it contains is arbitrary. To display and sort data, specify both the language and region.

The defined cultures have a hierarchy in which the parent of a specific culture is a neutral culture and the parent of a neutral culture is the invariant culture. The Parent property contains the neutral culture associated with a specific culture. Custom cultures should define the Parent property in conformance with this pattern.

If DateTimeFormatInfo.Calendar is the TaiwanCalendar but the Thread.CurrentCulture is not "zh-TW", then DateTimeFormatInfo.GetEraName and DateTimeFormatInfo.GetAbbreviatedEraName return an empty string ("").

Custom Cultures

When preparing software to handle custom cultures, consider the following:

Custom cultures can have values that exceed the ranges of the Microsoft-shipped cultures. For example, some cultures have unusually long month names, unexpected date or time formats, or other unusual data.
Respect the user's culture data values; for example, the user might want a 24-hour clock or a yyyyMMdd date format.
Remember that custom cultures override default values. Therefore, you cannot consider culture data to be stable. Country names, date formats, and spellings will probably change in the future.

Dynamic Culture Data

Except for the invariant culture, culture data is dynamic. This is true even for the predefined cultures. For example, countries or regions adopt new currencies, change their spellings of words, or change their preferred calendar, and culture definitions change to track this. Custom cultures are subject to change without notice, and any specific culture might be overridden by a custom replacement culture. An individual user can also override cultural preferences. Applications should always obtain culture data at run time.

Implemented Interfaces

This class implements IFormatProvider to supply formatting information to applications.

Topic	Location
How to: Set the Culture and UI Culture for ASP.NET Web Page Globalization	Building ASP .NET Web Applications
How to: Retrieve Resource Values Programmatically	Building ASP .NET Web Applications
How to: Create Resource Files for ASP.NET Web Sites	Building ASP .NET Web Applications
How to: Display Right-to-Left Text Using HTML Tags for Globalization	Building ASP .NET Web Applications
How to: Set the Culture and UI Culture for ASP.NET Web Page Globalization	Building ASP .NET Web Applications
How to: Retrieve Resource Values Programmatically	Building ASP .NET Web Applications
How to: Create Resource Files for ASP.NET Web Sites	Building ASP .NET Web Applications
How to: Display Right-to-Left Text Using HTML Tags for Globalization	Building ASP .NET Web Applications
How to: Create Resource Files for ASP.NET Web Sites (Visual Studio)	Building ASP .NET Web Applications in Visual Studio
How to: Create Resource Files for ASP.NET Web Sites	Building ASP .NET Web Applications

Examples

The following example determines the parent culture of each specific culture that uses the Chinese language.

Imports System.Globalization

Public Class Example

   Public Shared Sub Demo(ByVal outputBlock As System.Windows.Controls.TextBlock)
      ' Prints the header.
      outputBlock.FontFamily = New System.Windows.Media.FontFamily("Courier New")
      outputBlock.Text &= "SPECIFIC CULTURE                             PARENT CULTURE" & vbCrLf

      ' Create an array of Chinese culture names.
      Dim cultureNames() As String = { "zh-CN", "zh-Hans", "zh-Hant", "zh-HK", _  
                                       "zh-MO", "zh-SG", "zh-TW" }

      ' Determines the specific cultures that use the Chinese language, and displays the parent culture.
      For Each cultureName As String In cultureNames
         Dim ci As New CultureInfo(cultureName) 
         outputBlock.Text &= String.Format("{0,-7} {1,-37}", ci.Name, ci.EnglishName)
         outputBlock.Text &= String.Format("{0,-7} {1}", ci.Parent.Name, ci.Parent.EnglishName) & vbCrLf
      Next 
   End Sub 
End Class 
' This example produces the following output.
'    SPECIFIC CULTURE                             PARENT CULTURE
'    zh-CN   Chinese (People's Republic of China) zh-Hans Chinese 
'    zh-Hans Chinese                                      Invariant Language (Invariant Country)
'    zh-Hant Chinese                                      Invariant Language (Invariant Country)
'    zh-HK   Chinese (Hong Kong S.A.R.)           zh-Hant Chinese 
'    zh-MO   Chinese (Macao S.A.R.)               zh-Hant Chinese 
'    zh-SG   Chinese (Singapore)                  zh-Hans Chinese 
'    zh-TW   Chinese (Taiwan)                     zh-Hant Chinese

using System;
using System.Globalization;

public class Example
{
   public static void Demo(System.Windows.Controls.TextBlock outputBlock)
   {
      // Displays the header.
      outputBlock.FontFamily = new System.Windows.Media.FontFamily("Courier New");
      outputBlock.Text += "SPECIFIC CULTURE                             PARENT CULTURE" + "\n";

      // Create an array of Chinese culture names.
      string[] cultureNames = { "zh-CN", "zh-Hans", "zh-Hant", "zh-HK",  
                                "zh-MO", "zh-SG", "zh-TW", };

      // Determines the specific cultures that use the Chinese language, and displays the parent culture.
      foreach (string cultureName in cultureNames)
      {
         CultureInfo ci = new CultureInfo(cultureName);
         outputBlock.Text += String.Format("{0,-7} {1,-37}", ci.Name, ci.EnglishName);
         outputBlock.Text += String.Format("{0,-7} {1}\n", ci.Parent.Name, ci.Parent.EnglishName);
      }
   }
}
/*
This example produces the following output.

SPECIFIC CULTURE                             PARENT CULTURE
zh-CN   Chinese (People's Republic of China) zh-Hans Chinese 
zh-Hans Chinese                                      Invariant Language (Invariant Country)
zh-Hant Chinese                                      Invariant Language (Invariant Country)
zh-HK   Chinese (Hong Kong S.A.R.)           zh-Hant Chinese 
zh-MO   Chinese (Macao S.A.R.)               zh-Hant Chinese 
zh-SG   Chinese (Singapore)                  zh-Hans Chinese 
zh-TW   Chinese (Taiwan)                     zh-Hant Chinese 
*/

Version Information

Silverlight

Supported in: 5, 4, 3

Silverlight for Windows Phone

Supported in: Windows Phone OS 7.1, Windows Phone OS 7.0

XNA Framework

Supported in: Xbox 360, Windows Phone OS 7.0

Platforms

For a list of the operating systems and browsers that are supported by Silverlight, see Supported Operating Systems and Browsers.

Thread Safety

Any public static (Shared in Visual Basic) members of this type are thread safe. Any instance members are not guaranteed to be thread safe.

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