No.	Date	Rel. Note	Data	Charts	Spec	Delta	GitHub Tag	Delta DTD	CLDR JSON
47	2025-03-13	v47	CLDR47	Charts47	LDML47	Δ47	release-47	ΔDtd47	47.0.0

Overview

Unicode CLDR provides key building blocks for software supporting the world’s languages. CLDR data is used by all major software systems (including all mobile phones) for their software internationalization and localization, adapting software to the conventions of different languages.

CLDR 47 focused on MessageFormat 2.0 and tooling for an expansion of DDL support. It was a closed cycle: locale data changes were limited to bug fixes and the addition of new locales, mostly regional variants.

Changes

This release note includes all changes from CLDR v46.1, a special release, which many users of CLDR (including ICU) have not updated to.

The most significant changes in this release are the following:

• MessageFormat has advanced from Final Candidate to Stable. For details, see below.
• New locales:
  • Core data for Coptic (cop), Haitian Creole (ht)
  • Locale data for 11 English locales and Cantonese (Macau) (yue_Hant_MO)
• Updated time zone data to tzdata 2025a
• RBNF (Rule Based Number Formatting): Number spellout data improvements for multiple languages
• Assorted transforms improvements
• Updated and revised population data
• Addition of derived emoji annotations that were missing: emoji with skin tones facing right
• Fixes to make the ja, ko, yue, zh datetimeSkeletons useful for generating the standard patterns
• Improved date/time test data

For more details, see below.

Locale Coverage Status

Count	Level	Usage	Examples
97	Modern	Suitable for full UI internationalization	čeština, Ελληνικά‎, Беларуская‎, ‎ᏣᎳᎩ‎, Ქართული‎, ‎Հայերեն‎, ‎עברית‎, ‎اردو‎, አማርኛ‎, ‎नेपाली‎, অসমীয়া‎, ‎বাংলা‎, ‎ਪੰਜਾਬੀ‎, ‎ગુજરાતી‎, ‎ଓଡ଼ିଆ‎, தமிழ்‎, ‎తెలుగు‎, ‎ಕನ್ನಡ‎, ‎മലയാളം‎, ‎සිංහල‎, ‎ไทย‎, ‎ລາວ‎, မြန်မာ‎, ‎ខ្មែរ‎, ‎한국어‎, 中文, 日本語‎, … ‎
16	Moderate	Suitable for “document content” internationalization, eg. in spreadsheet	Akan, Balóchi [Látin], brezhoneg, Cebuano, føroyskt, IsiXhosa, Māori, sardu, veneto, Wolof, татар, тоҷикӣ, कांगड़ी‎, …
55	Basic	Suitable for locale selection, eg. choice of language on mobile phone	Basa Sunda, emakhuwa, Esperanto, eʋegbe, Frysk, Malti, босански (ћирилица), କୁୱି (ଅଡ଼ିଆ), కువి (తెలుగు), ᱥᱟᱱᱛᱟᱲᱤ, ᓀᐦᐃᓇᐍᐏᐣ‬, ꆈꌠꉙ‎, …

TBD: update the above

* Note: Each release, the number of items needed for Modern and Moderate increases. So locales without active contributors may drop down in coverage level.

For a full listing, see Coverage Levels

MessageFormat 2.0 now Stable

Software needs to construct messages that incorporate various pieces of information. The complexities of the world’s languages make this challenging. MessageFormat 2.0 enables developers and translators to create natural-sounding user interfaces that can appear in any language and support the needs of various cultures.

The new MessageFormat defines the data model, syntax, processing, and conformance requirements for the next generation of dynamic messages. It is intended for adoption by programming languages, software libraries, and software localization tooling. It enables the integration of internationalization APIs (such as date or number formats) and grammatical matching (such as plurals or genders). It is extensible, allowing software developers to create formatting or message selection logic that add on to the core capabilities. Its data model provides the means of representing existing syntaxes, thus enabling gradual adoption by users of older formatting systems.

Tech Preview implementations are available in C++, Java, and JavaScript:

• ICU4J, Java: com.ibm.icu.message2, part of ICU 76, is a tech preview implementation of the MessageFormat 2.0, together with a formatting API. See the ICU User Guide for examples and a quickstart guide, and Trying MF 2.0 Final Candidate to try a “Hello World”.
• ICU4C, C++: icu::message2::MessageFormatter, part of ICU 76, is a tech preview implementation of MessageFormat 2.0, together with a formatting API. See the ICU User Guide for examples and a quickstart guide, and Trying MF 2.0 Final Candidate to try a “Hello World”.
• Javascript: messageformat 4.0 provides a formatter and conversion tools for the MessageFormat 2 syntax, together with a polyfill of the runtime API proposed for ECMA-402.

(Because of the timing, these implement a slightly earlier version of the spec, but can be used for initial evaluation, testing, and experimentation.)

Specification Changes

The following is a summary of the most significant changes to the specification (LDML) since CLDR 46. For more information, see LDML 47.

• Many changes to MessageFormat, including:
  • Now stable, with the stability policy now normative.
  • Added and clarified terminology
  • Modified portions of the syntax (ABNF)
  • Revised the Default Bidi Strategy, and added support for bidirectional isolates and marks
  • Enabled functions to know whether an option value was set using a literal or a variable, which is necessary for some function’s selection mechanism (see below).
  • Updated the default functions
    • Only three default functions are stable: :string, :number, and :integer. Other functions are Draft.
• Added a Time Precision option to Semantic Datetime Skeletons, replacing discrete time fields
• Significant changes in Timezones, Unit Identifiers, Keyboard Transforms, Currency elements, and others.
• Moved @MATCH documentation to the site (it is for internal tooling)

There are many more changes that are important to implementations, such as changes to certain identifier syntax and various algorithms. See the Modifications section of the specification for details.

Data Changes

DTD Changes

Changes include:

• Ordering currencies used in each region
• CLDR-17531 Adding script data (for example, relating the script code Jpan to its component script codes)
• Adding the attribution attribute to keyboards
• Most of the DTD changes were to tighten up the validity constraints (@MATCH) on various attributes. These don’t affect implementations.

For a full listing, see Delta DTDs.

Also see other changes listed under keyboards.

Supplemental Data Changes

• Ordered scripts in <languageData> in descending order of usage per locale CLDR-18155
• Updated language matching for Afrikaans to English (en) from Dutch (nl) CLDR-18198
• Fixed invalid codes CLDR-18129
• Updated various language population numbers for Bouvet Island, Canada, El Salvador, Macau, Mauritius, Sierra Leone, South Georgia and Bouvet Islands, Tokelau, and Zambia. Also for French across the world.
• Fixed matching languages to likely subtags for many languages in the above countries as well as: Malay (individual language), Serbian in Russia, and Sudanese Arabic.
• Added script metadata CLDR-17531
• TBD: add others

For a full listing, see ¤¤BCP47 Delta and ¤¤Supplemental Delta

Locale Data Changes

• Updated language matching for Afrikaans to English (en) from Dutch (nl) CLDR-18198
• Ordered scripts in <languageData> in descending order of usage per locale CLDR-18155
• Fixed certain invalid codes CLDR-18129
• Cleanups for current pattern variants alt="alphaNextToNumber" and alt="noCurrency":
  • These were introduced in CLDR 42 (per CLDR-14336) to provide a cleaner way of adjusting currency patterns when an alphabetic currency symbol is used, or when a currency-style pattern is desired without a currency symbol (as for use in a table). Gaps in the data coverage showed up, because the translators weren’t shown the right values. Fixes were made in CLDR-17879.
• Fixed missing numberSystem attributes
  • As noted below in Migration, number <symbols> elements and format elements (<currencyFormats>, <decimalFormats>, <percentFormats>, <scientificFormats>) should all have a numberSystem attribute, and such elements without a numberSystem attribute will be deprecated in CLDR 48. To prepare for this, in CLDR 47, all such elements were either removed (if redundant) or correct by adding a numberSystem attribute. (CLDR-17760)

For a full listing, see Delta Data

Collation Data Changes

• Two old zh collation variants are removed: big5han and gb2312. They are no longer typically used, and only cover a fraction of the CJK ideographs. (CLDR-16062)

Number Spellout Data Changes

• Number spellout rules are added for Gujarati. (CLDR-18111)
• Number spellout rules are improved for several other languages:
  • Bulgarian: Improved usage of ‘и’ (“and”). (CLDR-17818)
  • Catalan: Added plural ordinal rules for both masculine and feminine, other fixes. (CLDR-15972)
  • Dutch: Added the alternate spellout-cardinal-stressed rule for specific Dutch scenarios. (CLDR-17187)
  • Hindi: Added the spellout-ordinal-masculine-oblique rule. (CLDR-15278)
  • Indonesian: Added missing semicolon that caused all ordinals to be prefixed with “pertama 2:”. (CLDR-17730)
  • Lithuanian: Added all of the grammatical cases, genders and grammatical numbers for cardinals and ordinals (no pronominal forms, and only the positive degree). (CLDR-18110)
  • Russian: Fixed grammatical case names in rules, and other issues. (CLDR-17386)
  • Ukrainian: Added digits-ordinal rules. (CLDR-16096)

Segmentation Data Changes

• The word break tailorings for fi and sv are removed to align with recent changes to the root collation and recent changes to ICU behavior. (CLDR-18272)

Transform Data Changes

• A new Hant-Latn transform is added, and Hans-Latn is added as an alias for the existing Hani-Latn transform. When the Unihan data kMandarin field has two values, the first is preferred for a CN/Hans context, and is used by the Hani-Latn/Hans-Latn transform; the second is preferred for a TW/Hant context, and is now used by the new Hant-Latn transform. (CLDR-18080)

JSON Data Changes

• CLDR-11874 New package with subdivision data (Note: see known issues).
• CLDR-17176 Timezone data now has a _type: "zone" attribute indicating which objects are leaf timezones (America/Argentina/Catamarca is a timezone, America/Argentina is not.)
• CLDR-18133 Currency data preserves the priority order (highest to lowest) of preferred currencies. This was an error in the DTD.
• CLDR-18277 Package name for transforms was incorrectly generated.
• CLDR-10397 languageMatching.json was restructured and reformatted, as it was previously unusable due to critical missing data
• CLDR-17531 scriptMetadata.json is a new file in cldr-core, with metadata on varaints of ISO 15924 scripts.

File Changes

In v47.0, but not 46.0:

• common/
  • main/
    • cop.xml, cop_EG.xml, en_CZ.xml, en_ES.xml, en_FR.xml, en_GS.xml, en_HU.xml, en_IT.xml, en_NO.xml, en_PL.xml, en_PT.xml, en_RO.xml, en_SK.xml, ht.xml, ht_HT.xml, yue_Hant_MO.xml
  • rbnf/
    • gu.xml
  • testData/
    • messageFormat/
      • tests/
        • bidi.json, fallback.json
        • functions/
          • currency.json, math.json
        • u-options.json
    • transforms/
      • und-Latn-t-und-hans.txt, und-Latn-t-und-hant.txt, Hant-Latin.xml keyboards/
  • abnf/
    • transform-from-required.abnf, transform-to-required.abnf

In 46.0, but not in 47.0:

• common/
  • segments/
    • fi.xml, sv.xml

Tooling Changes

There were various SurveyTool improvements targeting expansion of DDL support and error detection, such as the following:

• Added a CLA check CLDR-17612
• Improved validity checks for codes CLDR-18129
• Improved ability to detect invalid URLs in the site and spec CLDR-16526

Keyboard Changes

Note: for the v48 timeframe, additional processes are being developed for broad intake of keyboards.

Spec and DTD changes:

• CLDR-16836 CLDR-18318 CLDR-18319 Added EBNF for keyboard transform format to the spec, and ABNF data files. This provides rigorous definition of the allowed keyboard transform format, as well as programmatic validation of the keyboard transform format.
• CLDR-17971 Added <info attribution=… attribute
• CLDR-18324 Added <keyboard3 draft=… attribute

Migration

• Removal of number data without numberSystem attributes.
  • Number <symbols> elements and format elements (<currencyFormats>, <decimalFormats>, <percentFormats>, <scientificFormats>) should all have a numberSystem attribute. In CLDR v48 such elements without a numberSystem attribute will be deprecated, and the corresponding entries in root will be removed; these were only intended as a long-ago migration aid. See the relevant sections of the LDML specification: Number Symbols and Number Formats.

V48 advance warnings

The following changes are planned for CLDR 48. Please plan accordingly to avoid disruption.

• Any locales that are missing Core data by the end of the CLDR 48 cycle will be removed CLDR-16004
• The default week numbering will change to ISO instead being based on the calendar week starting in CLDR 48 CLDR-18275. The calendar week data will be more clearly targeted at matching usage in displayed month calendars.
• The likely language for Belarus is slated to change to Russian CLDR-14479
• The major components in supplementalData.xml and supplementalMetadata.xml files are slated to be organized more logically and moved into separate files.
  • This will make it easier for implementations to filter out data that they don’t need, and make internal maintenance easier. This will not affect the data: just which file it is located in. Please plan to update XML and JSON parsers accordingly.
• The languageData element and/or some of its attributes may be deprecated, and their data removed. CLDR-18087
• The <version number="$Revision$"> may be deprecated and data removed. The #FIXED values in the DTD may also be retired in favor of explicit values. CLDR-18377, CLDR-14161

Known Issues

• CLDR-18219 common/subdivisions data files contained additional values that should not be present. These will be removed in the future, but note that they may be present in the new JSON data:
  • Non-subdivisions such as AW: Use the region code AW instead for translation.
  • Overlong subdivisions such as fi01: Use the region code AX instead for translation.

Acknowledgments

Many people have made significant contributions to CLDR and LDML; see the Acknowledgments page for a full listing.

The Unicode Terms of Use apply to CLDR data; in particular, see Exhibit 1.

For web pages with different views of CLDR data, see charts.