Mango: So Many Language Options

When Windows Phone 7 launched it supported only 5 languages. With the Mango update Microsoft will add 17 more languages Brazilian Portuguese, Chinese (simplified and traditional), Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Greek, Hungarian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian (Bokmål), Polish, Portuguese, Russian, and Swedish.

A key point that many need to be aware of was brought up by Microsoft’s John McConnell, a member of the phone’s international engineering team.

I want to stress that you might not see all these display languages listed as options on your phone. The exact display options depend on your handset manufacturer and mobile operator.

One of the main reasons that all phones will not support all languages is memory. Simply put, it would take up too much space having every language on there. The one good thing though is that there will be 20 new keyboard language options: Brazilian Portuguese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Greek, Hungarian, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Malaysian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Swedish, Traditional Chinese, Turkish, and Ukrainian. All the keyboard languages will be available to every phone regardless of the display languages it came with.

While none of these language options impact me, I look forward to others enjoying Windows Phone in their respective language.