The purpose of this template is to indicate that a span of text belongs to a particular language. It often makes no visible changes to the text but 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.
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 codeTa̱mpi̱let:Colon
{{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}}'' (Ta̱mpi̱let:!mxt) →la'az (Ta̱mpi̱let:!mxt) – 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 approachesTa̱mpi̱let:Colon|italic=no– renders{{{2}}} in upright font; italic markup around the template is ignored; italic markup inside the template causes an error messageTa̱mpi̱let:Colon
{{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 markupTa̱mpi̱let:Colon
{{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.
There are language-specific versions of this template, such as {{lang-fr}} and {{lang-ru}}, which are 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''' ({{lang-ru|кремль}}, 'castle') is a major fortified central complex ... → Akremlin (Roshya:кремль, 'castle') is a major fortified central complex ...
WhileTa̱mpi̱let:Tnull templates output 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 ({{lang-fr|Vintimille}}) → the border town of Ventimiglia (Fi̱ransa:Vintimille)
the border town of Ventimiglia ({{lang-fr|italic=no|Vintimille}}) → the border town of Ventimiglia (Fi̱ransa:Vintimille)
the border town of Ventimiglia ({{lang-fr|{{noitalic|Vintimille}}}}) → the border town of Ventimiglia (Fi̱ransa:Ta̱mpi̱let:Noitalic)
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.
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 markup 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 theTa̱mpi̱let:Tnull templates, as this is implied by the template's language.
specifies font size of the content intext; use a value suitable for use with the CSSfont-size property; this should almost always be a relative value supplied inTa̱mpi̱let:Mxt orTa̱mpi̱let:Mxt units, not a fixedTa̱mpi̱let:!mxt value.
–
nocat
inhibits automatic categorization; mirror version ofcat; accepted values are:yes,y,true,t,on,1
–
cat
inhibits automatic categorization; mirror version ofnocat; accepted values are:no,n,false,f,off,0
{{lang}} uses the Lua functionlang()Module:Lang. That module also supports all of theTa̱mpi̱let:Tnull 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}} →Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'Module:Lang/tag from name' not found.←
{{lang|fn=is_lang_name|xxxxx}} →Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'Module:Lang/tag from name' not found.←
lang – the function that renders{{lang}}; listed here for completeness, this particular usage is more-or-less pointless
lang_xx_inherit – the function that rendersTa̱mpi̱let:Tnull template where the text is not italicized; can be used when aTa̱mpi̱let:Tnull template, for example{{lang-aao}}, does not exist for a particular language:
{{lang|fn=lang_xx_inherit|code=aao|Algerian Saharan Arabic text}} →Algerian Saharan Arabic:Algerian Saharan Arabic text
lang_xx_italic – the function that rendersTa̱mpi̱let:Tnull template where the text is italicized; can be used when aTa̱mpi̱let:Tnull template, for example{{lang-svc}}, does not exist for a particular language:
{{lang|fn=lang_xx_italic|code=svc|Vincentian Creole English text}} →Vincentian Creole English:Vincentian Creole English text
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}} →Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'Module:Lang/tag from name' not found.
transl – the function that renders{{transl}}; listed here for completeness, this particular usage is more-or-less pointless
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):
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}}:
The{{lang}} template is not only used to specify the language of foreign words, but can also be 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, theISO 639‑2 language codeund, for Undetermined language, should be used:
The {{lang|und-Hani|字}} Han character has 6 strokes.
The字 Han character has 6 strokes.
Han characters are used in Chinese, Japanese, sometimes Korean, and formerly Vietnamese, and in this case the character is not used for any specific language. Note that the script code used isHani, which specifies generic Han characters (Hanzi, Kanji, Hanja).
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:
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.
If the {{lang}} template will have to be combined with links one might be tempted to move the {{lang}} template into the link so that it would only frame the link's text label, not the syntax elements of the links or other stylistic elements of some types of links. However, this does not work. The {{lang}} will have to wrap the entire link, regardless if it is an internal or external link, or a link provided through a {{ill}} interwiki link template:
[[{{lang|en|Book of hours}}]] → [[Book of hours]] (never works)
[[Book of hours|{{lang|de|Stundenbuch}}]] →Stundenbuch (does not work in article space, works on talk and some other types of pages)
{{ill|Machsor Lipsiae|de|lt={{lang|he-LA|Machsor Lipsiae}}}} →Ta̱mpi̱let:Ill (does not work in article space, works on talk and some other types of pages)
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:
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۔}}
