This template is used onapproximately 429,000 pages. To avoid major disruption and server load, any changes should be tested in the template's/sandbox or/testcases subpages, or in your ownuser subpage. The tested changes can be added to this page in a single edit. Consider discussing changes on thetalk page before implementing them.

This templateshould not be used incitation templates such asCitation Style 1 andCitation Style 2, because it includes markup that will pollute theCOinS metadata they produce; seeWikipedia:COinS.

This is adocumentationsubpage forTemplate:Lang. It may contain usage information,categories and other content that is not part of the original template page.

This template usesLua: Module:Lang (sandbox)

After adiscussion in 2024, most of the{{lang-??}} templates were replaced by{{langx}}

The purpose of this template is to indicate that a piece of text belongs to a particular language other than that of the page as a whole (by default, English, on this Wikipedia). It can be used inline, or around block-level elements such as<poem>, paragraphs, lists, or divs.

The template italicises the text by default (this can be suppressed, and does not apply to certain scripts) and can promptweb browsers to use a more appropriate font or screen readers to use a particular kind of pronunciation and so on. See§ Rationale for more information.

     {{lang|language tag|text}}

Thelanguage tag must be anISO 639 language code. See thelist of ISO 639-1 codes for two-letter codes, and thelist of ISO 639-3 codes, which defines three-letter codes and aims to cover all known natural languages.

The template also supports properly formattedIETF language tags using subtags that identify the language's script, region, and/or variant. The ISO 639 language code is a two- or three-letter abbreviation, in lowercase, of the language's name. French, for example, has the codefr:

• She said: "{{lang|fr|Je suis française.}}" → She said: "Je suis française."

Because all languages represented by two-letter codes inISO 639-1 can also be represented by their three-letter equivalents inISO 639-2 and above, it is recommended to use the shortest language tag possible that sufficiently describes the target language.^[1] So while French could be represented by ISO 639-2'sfra code, use the ISO 639-1 codefr instead. Likewise, script, region, and variant information should be included only when they provide a necessary distinction. For an up-to-date list of available language, script, region, and variant codes, please refer to theIANA'slanguage subtag registry.

By default, this template will place articles into the relevant subcategory ofCategory:Articles containing non-English-language text. To suppress this – e.g. when using{{lang}} within awikilink or thetitle parameter of a citation – add the parameter|cat=no.

{{lang}} automatically applies italic stylingwhen the text in{{{2}}} is written entirely in theLatn script (the Latin alphabet and its extensions), either when that is the default encoding for the language or when it is triggered by axx-Latn language code:

• {{lang|fr|Je suis française.}} →Je suis française.
• ''{{lang|fr|Je suis française.}}'' →Je suis française. – external markup is ignored
• {{lang|he-Latn|la'az}} ({{lang|he|לעז}}) →la'az (לעז)
• ''{{lang|he-Latn|la'az}}'' (''{{lang|he|לעז}}'') →la'az (לעז) – external markup is ignored around thehe-Latn text, but will incorrectly italicize the Hebrew-character material.

WhenLatn script should not be italicized, there are multiple approaches:|italic=no– renders{{{2}}} in upright font; italic markup around the template is ignored; italic markup inside the template causes an error message:

• {{lang|fr|Je suis française.|italic=no}} →Je suis française.
• ''{{lang|fr|Je suis française.|italic=no}}'' →Je suis française.
• ''{{lang|fr|Je suis''française''.|italic=no}}'' →[Je suisfrançaise.]Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) – italic markup in conflict with|italic=no

|italic=unset– disables template-provided styling;{{{2}}} is styled according to external or internal wiki markup:

• {{lang|fr|Je suis française.|italic=unset}} →Je suis française.
• ''{{lang|fr|Je suis française.|italic=unset}}'' →Je suis française.
• {{lang|fr|''Je suis'' English.|italic=unset}} →Je suis English.

{{noitalic}}can also be used:

• {{lang|fr|Je suis{{noitalic|English}}.}} →Je suisEnglish.

There is a version of this template,{{langx}}, which is intended to be used the first time a language appears in an article. These templates will print the language's name and, when appropriate, italicize their content:

• A'''kremlin''' ({{langx|ru|кремль}}, 'castle') is a major fortified central complex ... → Akremlin (Russian:кремль, 'castle') is a major fortified central complex ...

While the{{langx}} template outputs text in italics for languages with Latin-based scripts, if plain text is required, such as for proper names,|italic=no or{{noitalic}} may be used:

• the border town of Ventimiglia ({{langx|fr|Vintimille}}) → the border town of Ventimiglia (French:Vintimille)
• the border town of Ventimiglia ({{langx|fr|italic=no|Vintimille}}) → the border town of Ventimiglia (French:Vintimille)
• the border town of Ventimiglia ({{langx|fr|{{noitalic|Vintimille}}}}) → the border town of Ventimiglia (French:Vintimille)

When formatting foreign-language text to match style guidelines, it is best to exclude the styling markup from the template, so that any extraneous markup which is not from the foreign language does not receive incorrect metadata for that language. This includes: English-language quotation marks around titles of works in languages that use other quotation character glyphs; italicization of titles in languages which do not use that convention; and emphasis that is not found (in one style or another) in the original foreign text; among other cases. If in doubt, put such markup outside the template when possible.

• {{lang|cel-x-proto|kal-}} →*kal-
• {{lang|cel-x-proto|kal-|proto=no}} →kal-
• {{langx|cel-x-proto|kal-}} →Proto-Celtic: *kal-
• {{langx|cel-x-proto|kal-|proto=no}} →Proto-Celtic:kal-
• {{lang|en|accidently}} →accidently
• {{lang|en|accidently|proto=yes}} →*accidently

To embed a string of right-to-left text (such asArabic orHebrew) within the usual left-to-right context,|rtl=yes should be added to correctly communicate writing direction. To mark a whole paragraph of right-to-left text,{{rtl-para}} should be used instead.

Any of these approaches will wrap the text in a container with thedir="rtl" attribute. In order to ensure correct rendering in browsers that do not fully supportHTML5bidirectional isolation, aleft-to-right mark is also added to the end of the text (see theW3C for details).

Note that text direction does not need to be specified when using the{{lang-xx}} templates, as this is implied by the template's language.

PerMOS:SCIENTIFIC,scientific names are never marked up with{{lang}} or related templates.

{{lang}} uses the Lua functionlang()Module:Lang. That module also supports all of the{{lang-??}} templates using the Lua functionslang_xx_inherit() andlang_xx_italic(). The module has other functions that may be useful. The function selector parameter|fn= tells module:lang which function to execute. The available functions are:

• is_ietf_tag – returnstrue if the providedIETF language tag is valid; nil else
  • {{lang|fn=is_ietf_tag|nv}} →true←
  • {{lang|fn=is_ietf_tag|xx}} →←
• is_lang_name – returnstrue if the provided language name is valid; nil else
  • {{lang|fn=is_lang_name|navajo}} →true←
  • {{lang|fn=is_lang_name|xxxxx}} →←
• lang – the function that renders{{lang}}; listed here for completeness, this particular usage is more-or-less pointless
• name_from_tag – returns the language name associated with the provided IETF language tag:
  • {{lang|fn=name_from_tag|apa}} → Apache languages
• tag_from_name – returns the ISO 639 language code (sometimes IETF language tag) associated with the provided language name:
  • {{lang|fn=tag_from_name|havasupai}} → yuf-x-hav
• xlit – the function that renders{{transliteration}}; listed here for completeness, this particular usage is more-or-less pointless
  • {{lang|fn=xlit|ar|DIN|al-Ḫawārizmī}} →al-Ḫawārizmī

If necessary, anISO 15924 script code can be appended to a language code to indicate the use of a specific script. For instance,Tajik (tg) is a language which can be found written inArabic (Arab),Latin (Latn), andCyrillic (Cyrl) scripts, making it necessary to always specify which script is in use. In such a case, taking care to preserve the script code's capitalization, we could end up with the following code (language tags in bold):

• Tajik ({{lang|tg-Arab|rtl=yes|تاجیکی}}, {{lang|tg-Latn|toçikī}}, {{lang|tg-Cyrl|тоҷикӣ}})

Tajik (تاجیکی,toçikī,тоҷикӣ)

Many languages, however, are so commonly written in one particular script that specifying the script is unnecessary. Russian, for instance, is almost exclusively written in Cyrillic, so there is no need to specifyru-Cyrl, just asen-Latn would be unnecessary for English. Thesubtag registry contains up-to-date information on which languages have common script codes that should be "suppressed".

To mark a language which has beentransliterated from one script into another, append the new script's code to the code of the original language. So if transliterating from Russian Cyrillic to a Latin script, the language tag on the transliteration would beru-Latn. If the transliteration scheme is known, and listed as a "variant" in thesubtag registry, it can be appended after any script and region codes. For example, Chinese transliterated into a Latin script using thepinyin system would bezh-Latn-pinyin. As a convenience for transliterating to Latin scripts, and to work around browser styling issues with some language and script combinations,{{transliteration}} may be used in place of{{lang}}:

• Moscow ({{lang|ru|Москва}}, {{transliteration|ru|Moskva}}) → Moscow (Москва,Moskva)

To specify a transliteration scheme, such as theISO transliteration standard for Cyrillic, use{{transliteration|ru|ISO|Moskva}}.

The{{lang}} template is not used to specify a single symbol or character in a script, unrelated to any specific language. Many times the character or symbol is used in several languages, but when the article refers to thegrapheme itself, the template{{script}} should be used:

• The Chinese character {{script|Hani|字}} has 6 strokes.

The Chinese character字 has 6 strokes.

Chinese characters (a.k.a.Han characters) have been used to write Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, andnumerous other languages. In this case the character does not represent a use specific to any language in particular. Note that the script code used isHani, which specifies Chinese characters generally, as opposed toHant andHans for traditional or simplified characters respectively.

The codemis, for “miscellaneous", is used to indicate that the language does not appear in ISO-639.

When it is necessary to indicate region-specific language, anISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code, orUN M49 region code, should be added to the language tag, taking care to preserve capitalization. For example, Portuguese (pt) as used in Brazil (BR) could be represented aspt-BR, and Spanish as used in Latin America ases-419.

Additionally, language, script, and region codes can all appear in the same tag. For instance, the codezh-Hant-TW should be used for Chinese text written withTraditional Han characters, containing words or expressions specific toTaiwan:

• Taiwan ({{lang|zh-Hant-TW|臺灣}}, {{transliteration|zh|Táiwān}})

Taiwan (臺灣,Táiwān)

This template supports various private-useIETF language tags. Private-use tags contain the-x- singleton and are used by the template to identify languages that are different, for one reason or another, from the base language identified by the ISO 639 language tag.

{{lang}} emits a language-specific category link when used in article space (one of the categories inCategory:Articles containing non-English-language text). Category wikilinks within wikilinks are not accepted by MediaWiki.

This example is a simulation because{{lang}} does not categorize in the Template namespace:

[[Book of hours|{{lang|de|Stundenbuch}}]]

[[Book of hours|<spantitle="German-language text"><ilang="de">Stundenbuch</i></span>[[Category:Articles containing German-language text]]]]

[[Book of hours|Stundenbuch]]

To create a working link, set|nocat=yes:

[[Book of hours|{{lang|de|Stundenbuch|nocat=yes}}]]

[[Book of hours|<spantitle="German-language text"><ilang="de">Stundenbuch</i></span>]]

Stundenbuch

When using{{lang}} with{{Interlanguage link}}, use that template's link-text parameter|lt=:

{{ill|Ehōmaki|ja|恵方巻|lt={{lang|ja-Latn|ehōmaki|nocat=yes}}}}

[[Ehōmaki|<spantitle="Japanese-language text"><ilang="ja-Latn">ehōmaki</i></span>]]<spanclass="noprint"style="font-size:85%; font-style: normal; ">&nbsp;&#40;[[:ja:恵方巻|ja]]&#41;</span>

ehōmaki (ja)

When using{{lang}} with non-English wiktionary links:

[[wikt:Κλεοπάτρα#Ancient Greek|{{lang|grc|Κλεοπάτρα|nocat=yes}}]]

[[wikt:Κλεοπάτρα#Ancient Greek|<spantitle="Ancient Greek (to 1453)-language text"><spanlang="grc">Κλεοπάτρα</span></span>]]

Κλεοπάτρα

In general, when using{{lang}} with wikilinks, markup the wikilink's display (piped) text, not the entire wikilink.

Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Text formatting § Foreign terms requires the use of{{lang}} instead of manual ''italics''. This is preferred for the following reasons:

• Web browsers can use the information in suchmultilingual support templates to choose an appropriate font.
  • This is great forCJK where a character can be given its language-specific shape but will fall back to another form if no appropriate font is found or if the preferred font lacks that character, for example because the language does not make use of that character: seeHan unification § Examples of language-dependent glyphs andthese comparison tables with a screenshot.
• Foraccessibility –screen readers need language info to speak text in the correct language – and to satisfyWikipedia accessibility guidelines.^[2]
• Forspell checkers and grammar checkers, to match the text to the dictionary and syntax of the correct language.
• To prevent the page from showing up on theWikipedia:Typo Team/moss/not English report, which flags articles needing translation.
• To help browsers choose appropriatequotation marks,^[3] and make decisions abouthyphenation,^[3]ligatures,^[4] and spacing.^[3]
• Users can apply styles to languages in theirstyle sheets (useful for editors).
• Search engines can use this information whenindexing text.
• Facilitates better data-scraping, parsing, and reuse.
• Useful for application developers who re-publish Wikipedia (also seeWikipedia:Manual of Style/Accessibility § Other languages).
• Useful for research or compiling statistics about language use in Wikipedia.

Registered users can apply customCSS styles to articles by placing style declarations in their user style sheet. The user style sheet can be created atSpecial:Mypage/common.css. For more information, seeHelp:User style. The following examples should work in mostmodern browsers.

To apply a specific font to all text marked as Russian of any script or region:

[lang|=ru]{font-family:fonteskaya;}/* or */:lang(ru){font-family:fonteskaya;}

To apply a specific font to text marked simply as Russian:

[lang=ru]{font-family:fonteskaya;}

To apply a color to all text marked with any language:

[lang]{color:green;}

If a font name contains characters besides basic Latin letters or hyphens, it is a good idea to enclose it in quotation marks because some such characters have special meanings (the most common case needing quotation marks is a multi-word font name with space characters). Quotation marks are also required for font families containing generic-family keywords ('inherit', 'serif', 'sans-serif', 'monospace', 'fantasy', and 'cursive'). See theW3C for more details.

You can combine this with font imports in your user stylesheet, for example, to show all German text inFraktur and all Urdu inNotoNastaliq Urdu Regular:

@importurl(https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=UnifrakturMaguntia);@importurl(http://fonts.googleapis.com/earlyaccess/notonastaliqurdudraft.css);:lang(de){font-family:UnifrakturMaguntia;font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;}:lang(ur){font-family:"Noto Nastaliq Urdu Regular","Noto Nastaliq Urdu";}

then the following wikitext will look like the image below:

Victor jagt zwölf Boxkämpfer quer über den Sylter Deich{{lang|de-Latf|Victor jagt zwölf Boxkämpfer quer über den Sylter Deich}}ٹھنڈ میں، ایک قحط زدہ گاؤں سے گزرتے وقت ایک چڑچڑے، بااثر و فارغ شخص کو بعض جل پری نما اژدہے نظر آئے۔{{lang|ur|ٹھنڈ میں، ایک قحط زدہ گاؤں سے گزرتے وقت ایک چڑچڑے، بااثر و فارغ شخص کو بعض جل پری نما اژدہے نظر آئے۔}}

• Category:Lang and lang-xx template errors (65)
• Category:Lang and lang-xx code promoted to ISO 639-1 (385)
• Category:Lang and lang-xx using deprecated ISO 639 codes (2)

• {{Langr}}, variant of this template that forces "roman" (non-italic) output, e.g. for proper names of places and institutions
• {{Langx}}, variant of this template that displays the name of the language before the marked-up text
• {{IPA}}
• {{Title language}}
• Category:Wikipedia multilingual support templates
• Lists of ISO 639 codes (language codes)
  • {{ISO 639 name}}
• List of ISO 15924 codes (script codes)
• List of ISO transliterations (transliteration codes)
• {{cleanup lang}} (for articles which should use this template, but do not yet)
• {{transliteration}} (for romanisation of languages not natively written in the Latin alphabet)
• {{script}} (for specific characters)
• {{wikt-lang}} (to simultaneously tag text as a language and link to Wiktionary)
• {{in lang}} (for visually marking external links to foreign-language content)
• {{mw lang}} (similar to {{ISO 639 name}} for MediaWiki-supported languages)
• {{interlanguage link}}
• Wikipedia:Translation (a discussion on the translation of information from articles from other languages' Wikipedias)

• W3C
  • Language tags in HTML and XML – Overview
  • Authoring Web pages
  • Understanding the New Language Tags
  • FAQ: Styling using the lang attribute
• IANA
  • IANA Language Subtag Registry
  • Tags for Identifying Languages (RFC 4646)
  • Matching of Language Tags (RFC 4647)
  • Language tags (obsolete perRFC 4646)
• Mozilla Firefox
  • Bug with script selection

• Template documentation pages