Some new Vista LIPs have been released!

by Michael S. Kaplan, published on 2007/04/04 06:24 -04:00, original URI: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/michkap/archive/2007/04/04/2024843.aspx


(I am still on vacation, but some news just shouldn't have to wait!) 

I promised that the हिन्दी (Hindi) LIP would the first of many.... and now they have made good on this promise. There are in fact two LIPs now available. One for Català (Catalan) and one for српски / srpski (Serbian Cyrillic)!

Some fun facts about each of them:

Catalan

Number of speakers: 6.6 million plus about 5 million second-language users

Name in the language itself: Català

Catalan is spoken is the Spanish regions of Catalonia, Valencia and the Balearic Islands but also in Andorra (a small independent nation between Spain and France), the French region of Roussillon and on the Italian island Sardinia. It has the status of official regional language in Catalonia, Valencia and the Balearic islands, and it is the official national language of Andorra.

Catalan, probably developed by the 9th century, was a prominent language in the Western Mediterranean region in the 13th to 15th centuries. In the 16th century it was slowly replaced by Castilian Spanish for the urban elites while the rural areas and urban lower classes kept speaking it. In the early 19th century Catalan experienced a major revival (Renaixença) in the press and in literature. The use of Catalan, like that of Basque or Galician, was banned under the Franco Regime (1939-1975), but the language recovered very quickly from this: The percentage of young Catalan speakers in Catalonia (90% of the 15-29 years old) is higher than the percentage of speakers overall. There is a vivid book market, major newspapers, TV and radio stations in Catalan - and the first Windows Language Interface Pack ever released was for Catalan.

Classification: Catalan is an Indo-European language and belongs to the Romance languages. Sharing many features with both Spanish and French it is often considered a transitory language between the Iberian and Gallic descendants of Latin.

Script: Catalan is written in Latin script.

 Serbian (Cyrillic)

Number of speakers:  11 million

Name in the language itself:  српски / srpski

Serbian, one of the varieties of the diasystem once known as Serbo-Croatian, is spoken by 11 million speakers in Serbia of which 10 million live in Serbia. It is official language there as it is in Montenegro and the Srpska republic in Bosnia-Herzegovina. There also considerable migrant communities in the United States, Canada and some European countries.

Serbian is still mutually intelligible with Croatian and Bosnian. While Croatian and Bosnian develop away from the former Serbo-Croatian standard there has not been much change in Serbian.

Classification: Serbian is as a Southern Slavic language; it belongs to the Slavic branch of the Indo-European languages.

Script: Serbian is written in two different scripts: Cyrillic and Latin. Cyrillic was used for Serbian traditionally until 1918 and is still the official alphabet, while Latin has become popular in the Yugoslavian era and remains so especially with the younger generation.

Enjoy! :-)

 

This post brought to you by с (U+0441, a.k.a. CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER ES)


# LIPless on 4 Apr 2007 6:39 AM:

Thanks for the update.

Any progress on enabling individuals to create the own LIPs?

# Michael S. Kaplan on 4 Apr 2007 8:08 AM:

No information yet, sorry. :-(

# anony.muos on 6 Apr 2007 7:25 AM:

डस विस्टा सपोर्ट इन्डिक फॅान्टस इन डबल्यू पी एफ?

# Igor on 10 Apr 2007 9:49 PM:

Great, now even my computer illiterate neighbours can use a computer to search for pr0n on the Internet :)

Michael, 3 questions for you:

1. Is there a Serbian Latin LIP for Vista?

2. Why this LIP works only on 32-bit version of Vista?

3. Why it is only partial?

# Igor on 10 Apr 2007 10:07 PM:

Err... I believe that whoever translated that download page has made a (small) mistake.

In drop down menu it should say "DSL/Kabl" instead of "DSL/Kabel" (in Cyrillic of course). We write "kabl" for cable here in Serbia, "kabel" is a spelling used in Croatia/Bosnia/Slovenia (and Germany). There are even worse versions -- "kabal" and "kabao" which I believe are both incorrect.

# Michael S. Kaplan on 10 Apr 2007 10:12 PM:

Hey Igor,

1 -- Not yet. But stay tuned. There are many more LIPs to come.

2 -- The 64-bit version exists but I do not know what the release mechanism or schedule is. I will inquire.

3 -- The same reason that all LIPs exist -- because part of a loaf is better than no loaf at all. :-)

# Charles Bocock on 11 Apr 2007 6:35 AM:

English (British)

Number of speakers: 54 million in UK (probably another 200m+ more worldwide)

British English (BrE) is a broad term used to distinguish the forms of the English language used in the United Kingdom from forms used elsewhere. It encompasses all the varieties of English used within the UK, including those found in England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales. Some may also use the term more widely, to include other forms such as Hiberno-English (spoken in Ireland).

Classification: The English language belongs to the western sub-branch of the Germanic branch, which is itself a branch of the Indo-European family of languages.

Script: British English is written in Latin script.

Current support: Unsupported by the world's most popular operating system, Microsoft Windows, in all versions.

:)

Simon on 6 Feb 2009 9:27 AM:

How do I download LIPs for UK English?

Michael S. Kaplan on 7 Feb 2009 7:00 PM:

It i very tricky to do, since no such LIP has ever been produced and as far as I know no such LIP is planned....


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