diff --git a/sys-apps/shadow/shadow-4.4-r2.ebuild b/sys-apps/shadow/shadow-4.4-r2.ebuild
index 429fa198d37f7..8226ece43369b 100644
--- a/sys-apps/shadow/shadow-4.4-r2.ebuild
+++ b/sys-apps/shadow/shadow-4.4-r2.ebuild
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-# Copyright 1999-2017 Gentoo Foundation
+# Copyright 1999-2018 Gentoo Foundation
 # Distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License v2
 
 EAPI="5"
@@ -15,7 +15,6 @@ KEYWORDS="alpha amd64 arm arm64 hppa ia64 m68k ~mips ppc ppc64 s390 sh sparc x86
 IUSE="acl audit +cracklib nls pam selinux skey xattr"
 # Taken from the man/Makefile.am file.
 LANGS=( cs da de es fi fr hu id it ja ko pl pt_BR ru sv tr zh_CN zh_TW )
-IUSE+=" $(printf 'linguas_%s ' ${LANGS[*]})"
 
 RDEPEND="acl? ( sys-apps/acl:0= )
 	audit? ( >=sys-process/audit-2.6:0= )
@@ -69,7 +68,7 @@ src_configure() {
 	if use nls ; then
 		local l langs="po" # These are the pot files.
 		for l in ${LANGS[*]} ; do
-			use linguas_${l} && langs+=" ${l}"
+			has ${l} ${LINGUAS-${l}} && langs+=" ${l}"
 		done
 		sed -i "/^SUBDIRS = /s:=.*:= ${langs}:" man/Makefile || die
 	fi
diff --git a/sys-apps/shadow/shadow-4.5.ebuild b/sys-apps/shadow/shadow-4.5.ebuild
index e1ca2b3ce598e..0863851a2f6c1 100644
--- a/sys-apps/shadow/shadow-4.5.ebuild
+++ b/sys-apps/shadow/shadow-4.5.ebuild
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-# Copyright 1999-2017 Gentoo Foundation
+# Copyright 1999-2018 Gentoo Foundation
 # Distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License v2
 
 EAPI="5"
@@ -15,7 +15,6 @@ KEYWORDS="alpha amd64 arm ~arm64 hppa ia64 ~m68k ~mips ppc ppc64 ~s390 ~sh sparc
 IUSE="acl audit +cracklib nls pam selinux skey xattr"
 # Taken from the man/Makefile.am file.
 LANGS=( cs da de es fi fr hu id it ja ko pl pt_BR ru sv tr zh_CN zh_TW )
-IUSE+=" $(printf 'linguas_%s ' ${LANGS[*]})"
 
 RDEPEND="acl? ( sys-apps/acl:0= )
 	audit? ( >=sys-process/audit-2.6:0= )
@@ -65,7 +64,7 @@ src_configure() {
 	if use nls ; then
 		local l langs="po" # These are the pot files.
 		for l in ${LANGS[*]} ; do
-			use linguas_${l} && langs+=" ${l}"
+			has ${l} ${LINGUAS-${l}} && langs+=" ${l}"
 		done
 		sed -i "/^SUBDIRS = /s:=.*:= ${langs}:" man/Makefile || die
 	fi