This template is used on୩,୮୯,୦୦୦+ pages, or roughly 456% of all 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.
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.
Thelanguage tag should consist of anISO 639 language code. The template 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.[୧] So while French could be represented by 639‑2'sfra code, use the 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|nocat=true.
Formatting
Automatic italics
{{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) – 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.
{{lang|fr|Je suis {{noitalic|English}}.}} →Je suisEnglish.
See table "lang |italic= parameter operation".
Language-specific templates
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 (Russian:кремль, 'castle') is a major fortified central complex ...
While{{lang-xx}} 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 (French:Vintimille)
the border town of Ventimiglia ({{lang-fr|italic=no|Vintimille}}) → the border town of Ventimiglia (French:Vintimille)
the border town of Ventimiglia ({{lang-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.
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. For convenience, the{{rtl-lang}} template accomplishes the same result by automatically including|rtl=yes. 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 supportHTML 5bidirectional 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. Therefore there is no{{rtl-lang-ar}}, only{{lang-ar}}.
yes indicates that the writing system used for the content intext is right-to-left; accepted values are:no (default),yes
IETF script subtag incode (if provided)
italic
see table "lang |italic= parameter operation"; accepted values are:yes,no,unset,invert,default
–
italics,i
size
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 in% orem units, not a fixedpx 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|de|... ein neues Opernprojekt in Angriff: ''Das Käthchen von Heilbronn'', nach Heinrich von Kleists gleichnamigem Drama.|italic=invert}}
... ein neues Opernprojekt in Angriff:Das Käthchen von Heilbronn, nach Heinrich von Kleists gleichnamigem Drama.
{{Lang|de|''... ein neues Opernprojekt in Angriff: ''Das Käthchen von Heilbronn'', nach Heinrich von Kleists gleichnamigem Drama.''|italic=unset}}
... ein neues Opernprojekt in Angriff:Das Käthchen von Heilbronn, nach Heinrich von Kleists gleichnamigem Drama.
Indicating writing script
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".
Transliteration
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,{{transl}} 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).
The {{script|Hani|字}} Han character has 6 strokes.
The字 Han character has 6 strokes.
Indicating regional variant
When it is necessary to indicate region-specific language, anISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code, orUN M.49 region code, should be added to the language tag, taking care to preserve capitalization. For example,Portuguese (pt) as used inBrazil (BR) could be represented aspt-BR, andSpanish as used inLatin 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 forChinese text written withTraditional Han characters, containing words or expressions specific toTaiwan:
Useful for research or compiling statistics about language use in Wikipedia.
Applying styles
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, but not inInternet Explorer 8 or earlier, which lack support for attribute selectors.
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۔}}
