title: Explain the effects of export LANG, LC_CTYPE, and LC_ALL
body: <p>I've just installed <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_Mint" rel="noreferrer">Linux Mint</a> 17 and faced a problem that I couldn't use the Russian language in the terminal. (I see <code>?</code> instead of letters.)</p>
  
  <p>On one forum I found this solution:</p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>Added in ~/.profile:</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <pre><code>export LANG=ru_RU.UTF-8
  export LC_CTYPE=ru_RU.UTF-8
  export LC_ALL=ru_RU.UTF-8
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>It helped, but also changed my interface language to Russian (which I didn't want). That's not even a problem, but anyway, I would like to know, how this code works (every line).</p>