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Language code: fo

Technical information about ISO 639 language code fo

Documentation

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

Code

fo

Name

Official

Faroese

Native

Føroyskt

Family
Germanic
Text direction

Left-to-Right

Language varieties
Northern dialectCentral dialectWestern dialectSouthern dialect
Related languages
IcelandicNorwegian (Nynorsk)Danish
Key facts
Retains four grammatical cases and three gendersOrthography mirrors Old Norse spelling and includes the silent letter ðContains around 28 distinct diphthongs, giving it a rich vowel systemAbout 50,000 native speakers, making it one of the smallest living Germanic languagesTraditional ballads (kvæði) are still sung in chain-dance, preserving medieval stories
Sample phrase

Hallo, hvussu hevur tú tað?

Character encodings

ISO 8859-10, UTF-8, UTF-16, UTF-32

Supported in Localizely

Faroese belongs to the Indo-European language family, more specifically to the Germanic subgroup. It is the official language of the Faroe Islands and is also spoken by some communities in Denmark. It is written using the Latin script (Faroese alphabet). It is estimated that there are more than 69,000 speakers worldwide.

Language presence globally

Speakers

Faroe Islands

48K

Denmark

21K

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

Related locale codes

fo-DK – Faroese (Denmark)

fo-FO – Faroese (Faroe Islands)

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