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Which Character Set Supports Which Language (Doc ID 62421.1)

In this Document

Purpose
Scope
Details
Character Sets:
References

APPLIES TO:

Oracle Database ­ Enterprise Edition ­ Version 7.3.4.5 and later

Oracle Database ­ Standard Edition ­ Version 7.3.4.5 and later
Information in this document applies to any platform.

PURPOSE

To help in choosing the correct NLS_CHARACTERSET for your Oracle database or to have an idea what languages a
client will support once the correct NLS_LANG is found.

SCOPE

All DBA's

DETAILS

This note identifies which ISO or MSWIN character sets supported by Oracle contain the characters from which
languages.

The Oracle name for the character set is given with the ISO name in brackets.

The NLS_LANG NEEDS to reflect the client Operating system charterset/encoding and cannot be "choosen", there is
only one correct value for a certain client.
This means that the old fable that the NLS_LANG NEED to be the same as the NLS_CHARACTERSET is NOT true. It
may be perfectly CORRECT to use a NLS_LANG set to WE8MSWIN1252 for a windows client and a
NLS_CHARACTERSET set to AL32UTF8 for example
This is documented in
Note:158577.1 NLS_LANG Explained (How does Client­Server Character Conversion Work?)
Note:179133.1 The correct NLS_LANG in a Windows Environment
Note:264157.1 The correct NLS_LANG setting in Unix Environments
Note:229786.1 NLS_LANG and webservers explained.

The NLS_CHARACTERSET has no relation with the Operating System of the database server, so it can be "choosen
freely" from all that are available in Oracle.
Oracle do not need any "OS" support to use a characterset as NLS_CHARACTERSET.

Hence for the NLS_CHARACTERSET the question "which one do I need to use" is often asked.

For the majority of customers an Unicode character set (AL32UTF8) is the best choice Note 333489.1 Choosing a
database character set means choosing Unicode and Note 1051824.6 What languages are supported in an Unicode
(UTF8/AL32UTF8) database?

For non­Unicode charactersets the best choice are xx8MSWIN125x charactersets, even if the database itself runs
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on an Unix platform.
The reason is simply that the majority of the clients are windows based systems, hence the best non­Unicode
characterset for a database is a characterset that can store all the characters known by those clients, which means
an xx8MSWIN125x characterset.

There is no problem using a MSWIN type characterset as *database* characterset on a non­windows/unix

platform.
A more detailed discussion is found in Note:264294.1 Choosing from WE8ISO8859P1, WE8ISO8859P15 or
WE8MSWIN1252 as db character set

Your current value for the database characterset ( NLS_CHARACTERSET ) can be found with this select:

select value from NLS_DATABASE_PARAMETERS where parameter='NLS_CHARACTERSET';

Character Sets:

All of these character sets below contain also the 7­bit ASCII characters ( US7ASCII ) characters ie: all English
characters and numerals used in languages who don't use an diacritics (accents and so) like English or the Latin
script version of Malay.

This are all characters DEFINED by US7ASCII: !"#$%&'()*+,­./0123456789:;<=>?

@ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ[\]^_`abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz{|}~

Characterset Supported Languages (+ English)

WE8ISO8859P15 (ISO 8859­15), WE8MSWIN1252 Albanian, Basque, Breton, Catalan, Cornish, Danish,
Dutch, Finnish, French, Frisian, Galician, German,
Greenlandic, Irish Gaelic (new orthography), Italian,
Luxemburgish, Norwegian, Portuguese, Rhaeto­
Romanic, Scottish Gaelic, Spanish, Swedish .
The Euro symbol

EE8ISO8859P2 (ISO 8859­2), Albanian, Croatian, Czech, German, Hungarian, Polish,

EE8MSWIN1250 Slovak, Slovenian, Sorbian.
(1250 also supports the Euro symbol)

NEE8ISO8859P4 (ISO 8859­4), BLT8MSWIN1257 Danish, Estonian, Finnish, German, Greenlandic,

Latvian, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Sami, Slovenian,
Swedish.
(1257 also supports the Euro symbol)

CL8ISO8859P5 (ISO 8859­5), CL8MSWIN1251 Bulgarian, Belarussian (previously know as

Byelorussian), Slavic Macedonian, Russian, Sebian,
Ukrainian.
(1251 also supports the Euro symbol)

AR8ISO8859P6 (ISO 8859­6), AR8MSWIN1256 Arabic

(1256 also supports the Euro symbol)

EL8ISO8859P7 (ISO 8859­7) , EL8MSWIN1253 Greek (monitoniko orthography),

(1253 also supports the Euro symbol)

IW8ISO8859P8 (ISO 8859­8), IW8MSWIN1255 Hebrew.

(1255 also supports the Euro symbol)

VN8MSWIN1258 Vietnamese

TH8TISASCII Thai

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JA16SJIS Japanese

ZHS16GBK Simplified Chinese

ZHT16MSWIN950 Traditional Chinese (Taiwan)

ZHT16HKSCS and ZHT16HKSCS31 Traditional Chinese (Hong Kong)

KO16MSWIN949 Korean

WE8ISO8859P1 (ISO 8859­1) Albanian, Basque, Breton, Catalan, Cornish, Danish,

Dutch, Faroese, French, Finnish, Frisian, Galician,
German, Greenlandic, Icelandic, Irish Gaelic (new
orthography), Italian, Luxemburgish, Norwegian,
Portuguese, Rhaeto­Romanic, Scottish Gaelic, Spanish,
Swedish.
(does NOT support the Euro)

SE8ISO8859P3 (ISO 8859­3) Esperanto, French, German, Italian, Maltese,

Portuguese, Turkish.
(does NOT support the Euro)

WE8ISO8859P9 (ISO 8859­9): Albanian, Basque, Breton, Catalan, Cornish, Danish,

Dutch, Finnish, French, Frisian, Galician, German,
Greenlandic, Irish Gaelic (new orthography), Italian,
Luxemburgish, Norwegian, Portuguese, Rhaeto­
Romanic, Scottish Gaelic,Spanish, Swedish, Turkish.
(does NOT support the Euro)

NE8ISO8859P10 (ISO 8859­10) Danish, Estonian, Faroese, Finnish, German,

Greenlandic, Icelandic, Irish Gaelic (new orthography),
Lithuanian, Norwegian, Sami, Slovenian, Swedish.
(does NOT support the Euro)

UTF8, AL32UTF8, AL16UTF16 All above languages and many more Note 1051824.6
What languages are supported in an Unicode
(UTF8/AL32UTF8) database?

For other charactersets please see also:

Note:223706.1 Using Locale Builder to view the definition of character sets
Note 282336.1 Charts of most current mono­byte Character sets

An excellent external resource is http://www.eki.ee/letter/ .

The website allows you to choose a language and then gives a overview of all charactersets that contain all the
letters needed for this language.
Please note that Oracle does not warrant that the information on that website is accurate.

REFERENCES

NOTE:333489.1 ­ Choosing a database character set means choosing Unicode

NOTE:341676.1 ­ Difference between WE8MSWIN1252 and WE8ISO8859P1 characterset
NOTE:260023.1 ­ Difference between AR8MSWIN1256 and AR8ISO8859P6 characterset
NOTE:121627.1 ­ Difference between WE8ISO8859P1 and WE8ISO8859P15 characterset
NOTE:158577.1 ­ NLS_LANG Explained (How does Client­Server Character Conversion Work?)
NOTE:179133.1 ­ The correct NLS_LANG in a Microsoft Windows Environment
NOTE:223706.1 ­ Using Locale Builder to view the definition of character sets
NOTE:232007.1 ­ Difference between WE8MSWIN1252 and WE8ISO8859P15 characterset
NOTE:1051824.6 ­ What languages are supported in an Unicode (UTF8/AL32UTF8) database?
NOTE:225912.1 ­ Changing Or Choosing the Database Character Set ( NLS_CHARACTERSET )
NOTE:264157.1 ­ The correct NLS_LANG setting in Unix Environments
NOTE:264294.1 ­ Choosing between WE8ISO8859P1, WE8ISO8859P15 or WE8MSWIN1252 as
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NLS_CHARACTERSET
NOTE:282336.1 ­ Charts of most current mono­byte / 8 bit Character sets
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