Unit mismatch: two numbers that cannot be compared
A unit mismatch is a comparison between two figures counting different things. Language figures in this category come in at least four units, and almost nothing on a vendor page says which one is in use. As of 2026-09-22.
| Unit | What it counts | Effect on the size of the figure |
|---|---|---|
| Languages | Distinct languages | The smallest of the four |
| Languages and dialects | Both, in one total | Inflated by regional variants |
| Languages and accents | Both, in one total | Inflated further |
| Locales | Language and market pairs | Inflated by markets per language |
Inclusion rule. The units that appear among the figures read here. A vendor stating no unit is recorded with its own wording rather than assigned one. Order. Narrowest unit first.
1One language can be fourteen entries
In a table read for this register, one language appears as a base entry plus thirteen named regional variants. That is nearly a tenth of the table, in one language, and it is only visible because the table names its rows.
Where a figure is a bare count, the same inflation is invisible. Two vendors publishing the same number can be describing inventories that differ by dozens of languages, depending entirely on how they counted.
2Nobody is obliged to state a unit, and almost nobody does
A sentence promising support in some number of languages states a figure and no unit. One vendor here says languages and accents, which is more careful than most, and immediately makes its figure incomparable with a figure counting languages alone.
So the register prints the vendor wording rather than a normalised number. The wording is where the unit lives, and rewriting it into a column of integers would destroy the only clue available.
3Why the columns are never added together
Site languages, document languages and voice languages are three units in the same sense. A vendor with nine of one, one rule for another and a hundred and forty-three entries in the third has no meaningful total.
Any table that produced one would be publishing a figure no vendor stated. This register keeps them in separate columns and says so on every page that carries more than one of them.
A definition, not a measurement: no vendor figure appears here that is not also in the register. Each column states the unit it counts on its own column page.
Nearby terms: Same-host rule, Coverage table. The whole vocabulary is at terms; nothing on this page is a claim about a named product.