@staticmethod
def normalize_locale(locale):
    """
        Normalize locale
        Extracts language code from passed in locale string to be used later
        for dictionaries loading.

        :param locale:          string, locale (en, en_US)
        :return:                string, language code
        """
    import re
    match = re.match('^[a-z]+', locale.lower())
    if match:
        return match.group()
