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The default list of locale.getdefaultlocale() is documented to be the
one of GNU gettext; in the source docs in Python 2.7 trunk:
 "envvars defaults to the search path used in GNU gettext; it must
 always contain the variable name 'LANG'."
...and at http://docs.python.org/dev/library/locale.html in addition to
that:
 "The GNU gettext search path contains 'LANGUAGE', 'LC_ALL',
 'LC_CTYPE', and 'LANG', in that order."
This is correct, cf.
http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/manual/gettext.html#Locale-Environment-Variables
However, the code in locale.py does not match the documentation; the
patch in issue #1166948 (svn r39572) moved LANGUAGE to the end of the
list. I suggest putting it back at the beginning as documented (the
other change in r39572 is ok).
The py3k branch appears to have the same problem.