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Language code: cy

Technical information about ISO 639 language code cy

Documentation

The table below provides technical details for the Welsh language, designated by the cy code from the ISO 639-1 standard.

Code

cy

Name

Official

Welsh

Native

Cymraeg

Family
Celtic
Text direction

Left-to-Right

Language varieties
Northern WelshSouthern Welsh
Related languages
BretonCornish
Key facts
Earliest surviving Welsh poetry dates from around the 6th centuryThe language marks grammatical relationships through initial consonant mutationsTraditional numbers employ a vigesimal (base-20) counting systemWelsh has two grammatical genders (masculine and feminine)The modern Welsh alphabet has 29 letters, including distinctive digraphs such as "dd", "ll" and "rh"
Sample phrase

Helo, sut wyt ti?

Character encodings

ISO 8859-14, UTF-8, UTF-16, UTF-32

Supported in Localizely

Welsh belongs to the Indo-European language family, specifically to the Celtic subgroup. It is officially used in Wales (United Kingdom) and is recognized as a minority language in Argentina, particularly in Chubut Province. Welsh is written using the Latin script and the Welsh alphabet. It is estimated that there are more than 800,000 speakers worldwide.

Language presence globally

Speakers

United Kingdom

540K

*The graph shows a rough estimate of Welsh speakers in countries where it is an official or minority language.

Related locale codes

cy-GB – Welsh (United Kingdom)

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