diff --git a/Lib/locale.py b/Lib/locale.py
index bf79952..e4d6023 100644
--- a/Lib/locale.py
+++ b/Lib/locale.py
@@ -306,7 +306,7 @@
     else:
         return language + '.' + encoding
 
-def getdefaultlocale(envvars=('LANGUAGE', 'LC_ALL', 'LC_CTYPE', 'LANG')):
+def getdefaultlocale(envvars=('LC_ALL', 'LC_CTYPE', 'LANG', 'LANGUAGE')):
 
     """ Tries to determine the default locale settings and returns
         them as tuple (language code, encoding).
@@ -351,6 +351,8 @@
     for variable in envvars:
         localename = lookup(variable,None)
         if localename:
+            if variable == 'LANGUAGE':
+                localename = localename.split(':')[0]
             break
     else:
         localename = 'C'
diff --git a/Misc/NEWS b/Misc/NEWS
index a3892fb..ce35555 100644
--- a/Misc/NEWS
+++ b/Misc/NEWS
@@ -224,6 +224,12 @@
 Library
 -------
 
+- Patch #1166948: locale.py: Prefer LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE and LANG over LANGUAGE
+  to get the correct encoding.
+
+- Patch #1166938: locale.py: Parse LANGUAGE as a colon separated list of
+  languages.
+
 - Patch #1268314: Cache lines in StreamReader.readlines for performance.
 
 - Bug #1290505: Fix clearing the regex cache for time.strptime().