Apache aliases / move from subdomains

[Gavin Hamill <gdh@acentral.co.uk>]

Hi :)

We have a site with a series of sub-domains by country, e.g. 
www.uk.domain.com, www.fr.domain.com etc. but we are moving away from this to 
a single 'www.domain.com' (for various reasons).. 

The problem is that now we want to have the site apply the same themes as it 
currently does, but based on whether the start of the address is e.g.

www.domain.com/scotland
www.domain.com/uk
www.domain.com/gb
www.domain.com/france
www.domain.com/francais       etc.

I was thinking of using a huge list of Apache aliases to redirect all of these 
to something more generic and appropriate like 

www.domain.com/locale.php?country=42&language=2

But I was curious to know if there's a more 'elegant' way to do this, perhaps 
using mod_rewrite ?

Cheers,
Gavin.