[XeTeX] No Non-English Hyphenation

[Sebastian Kosch]

Hi,

looking for help here: my xe(la)tex (a pretty fresh TexLive 2008 install on 
Ubuntu) doesn't recognize any hyphenation patterns except the standard ones.

Compiling a regular (or empty) document using the lines ...

 \usepackage{polyglossia}
 \setdefaultlanguage{german}

... results in:

 Package polyglossia Warning: 
 No hyphenation patterns were loaded for `ngerman'
 (polyglossia)                I will use the patterns loaded for
 \language=0
 (polyglossia)                instead on input line 44.

 Package polyglossia Warning:
 \setlocalhyphenminuseless for unknown language
 german on input line 159.

Otherwise, the PDF renders fine (except for the countless overfulls).
Curiously, LaTeX/Babel finds the pattern formats just fine and starts up 
saying:

 LaTeX2e <2005/12/01>                                                  
 Babel <v3.8l> and hyphenation patterns for english,
 usenglishmax, dumylang, nohyphenation, german-x-2008-06-18,
 ngerman-x-2008-06-18, german, ngerman, loaded.

There are two (relevant) language.dats:

 $ kpsewhere language.dat
 /usr/local/texlive/2008/texmf-var/tex/generic/config/language.dat
 /usr/local/texlive/2008/texmf/tex/generic/config/language.dat
 /usr/local/texlive/2008/texmf-dist/tex/lambda/config/language.dat

The first one includes (apart from the standard stuff):

 % from dehyph-exptl: 
 german-x-2008-06-18 dehypht-x-2008-06-18.tex
 =german-x-latest
 ngerman-x-2008-06-18 dehyphn-x-2008-06-18.tex
 =ngerman-x-latest
 % from hyphen-german:
 german loadhyph-de-1901.tex
 ngerman loadhyph-de-1996.tex

The second one has hundreds of languages, but also includes the aforementioned 
stuff. Then there are two language.defs, namely ...

 $ kpsewhere language.def
 /usr/local/texlive/2008/texmf-var/tex/generic/config/language.def
 /usr/local/texlive/2008/texmf/tex/generic/config/language.def

... both of which have the following:

 % from dehyph-exptl:
 \addlanguage{german-x-2008-06-18}{dehypht-x-2008-06-18.tex}{}{2}{2}
 \addlanguage{german-x-latest}{dehypht-x-2008-06-18.tex}{}{2}{2}
 \addlanguage{ngerman-x-2008-06-18}{dehyphn-x-2008-06-18.tex}{}{2}{2}
 \addlanguage{ngerman-x-latest}{dehyphn-x-2008-06-18.tex}{}{2}{2}
 % from hyphen-german:
 \addlanguage{german}{loadhyph-de-1901.tex}{}{2}{2}
 \addlanguage{ngerman}{loadhyph-de-1996.tex}{}{2}{2}

Again, the second file in /tex has much more, but including this paragraph.
If anyone's interested in the output of fmtutil --all, I've posted it here:

 http://pastebin.com/m749fc68c

I don't really know much about fmt files and where xetex looks for his one, so 
if you think they might be part of the problem there please ask for further 
info :-)

Thanks!

Sebastian