Template:language data documentation

This module contains definitions and metadata for. See Languages for more information.

This module must not be used directly in other modules or templates. The data should be accessed through Module:languages.

Required values
Every entry in the table must contain the following indexed fields:


 * The "canonical" name of the language. This is the name that is used in Wiktionary entries and category names.
 * The "canonical" name of the language. This is the name that is used in Wiktionary entries and category names.


 * The Wikidata item id (Q number) for the language. Can be specified as a number (a positive integer) or a string that starts with  and ends with decimal digits. Set to   if not known/present. This replaces the older   property, which can still be used to link to specific sections or language editions.
 * The Wikidata item id (Q number) for the language. Can be specified as a number (a positive integer) or a string that starts with  and ends with decimal digits. Set to   if not known/present. This replaces the older   property, which can still be used to link to specific sections or language editions.

Optional values

 * The code for the family that the language belongs to. See Families.
 * The code for the family that the language belongs to. See Families.


 * A list of script codes. See Scripts. These represent all the scripts (writing systems) that this language uses in the real world, as well as the ones that Wiktionary uses. The scripts that are used most often on Wiktionary should be first in the list, as this will speed up script detection.
 * Many templates and modules detect the script of text in a particular language using the lua function in Module:scripts. This function goes down the list of scripts and counts how many characters in the text belong to each script. If all the characters belong to one script, that script will be returned; otherwise, the script with the most characters will be returned. Thus, script detection will be faster if the most frequently used scripts are first in the list. If none of the characters match any of the listed scripts, then the  script is returned (even if the characters would match a script not listed). Translingual  and Undetermined  have the special value lua, which means they are treated as having every script. This value should not be set for any other language codes.
 * Due to the ongoing problems with Lua memory limits, this should be given as a comma-separated list in a string (and not a table). This is then converted into a table when returned. For example: lua.
 * Due to the ongoing problems with Lua memory limits, this should be given as a comma-separated list in a string (and not a table). This is then converted into a table when returned. For example: lua.


 * The type of language (which affects how it is handled on Wiktionary). Possible values are:
 * - This value is the default, so it doesn't need to be specified. It indicates that the is attested according to WT:CFI and therefore permitted in the main namespace. There may also be reconstructed terms for the language, which are placed in the Reconstruction namespace and must be prefixed with * to indicate a reconstruction.
 * - This language is not attested according to CFI, and therefore is allowed only in the Reconstruction namespace. All terms in this language are reconstructed, and must be prefixed with *.
 * - This language is attested but does not meet the additional requirements set out for constructed languages (WT:CFI). Its entries must therefore be in the Appendix namespace, but they are not reconstructed and therefore should not have * prefixed in links.
 * - This language is attested but does not meet the additional requirements set out for constructed languages (WT:CFI). Its entries must therefore be in the Appendix namespace, but they are not reconstructed and therefore should not have * prefixed in links.


 * A list of the language codes of the direct ancestors of this language. For example, the ancestor of English is listed as  (Middle English);   (Old English, the ancestor of Middle English),   (Proto-Germanic, the ancestor of Old English), and   (Proto-Indo-European, the ancestor of Proto-Germanic) are not listed.
 * For most languages, only one ancestor code should be given, but multiple ancestors can be listed for pidgins, creoles and mixed languages.
 * The ancestor language list should not be included if the language's direct ancestor is the proto-language of the family to which the language belongs. In such a case, if the family code has been provided, Module:languages will automatically add the proto-language as the language's ancestor. For example, Proto-Germanic belongs to the Indo-European  family, and its direct ancestor is Proto-Indo-European . Because Proto-Indo-European is the proto-language of the Indo-European languages, Proto-Germanic does not need an   table; Proto-Indo-European will be automatically returned as its ancestor by the lua function.
 * Due to the ongoing problems with Lua memory limits, this should be given as a comma-separated list in a string (and not a table). This is then converted into a table when returned. For example: lua.
 * Due to the ongoing problems with Lua memory limits, this should be given as a comma-separated list in a string (and not a table). This is then converted into a table when returned. For example: lua.


 * A list of the Wikimedia language codes that this language maps to. This is used to translate Wiktionary codes to Wikimedia codes, which are usually the same but there are a few languages where it is different. The language codes must be valid Wikimedia codes (as determined by the wiki software), and if they are not defined in one of the language data modules, they must be defined in Module:wikimedia languages/data.
 * Due to the ongoing problems with Lua memory limits, this should be given as a comma-separated list in a string (and not a table). This is then converted into a table when returned. For example: lua.
 * Note that Wikimedia <-> Wiktionary language codes are currently defined in four places: the language modules (as documented here); Module:wikimedia languages/data; interwiki_langs in Module:translations/data; and the wiktprefix field of the `metadata` variable in MediaWiki:Gadget-TranslationAdder-Data.js. FIXME: Unify this data.
 * Note that Wikimedia <-> Wiktionary language codes are currently defined in four places: the language modules (as documented here); Module:wikimedia languages/data; interwiki_langs in Module:translations/data; and the wiktprefix field of the `metadata` variable in MediaWiki:Gadget-TranslationAdder-Data.js. FIXME: Unify this data.


 * The name of the Wikipedia article for the language. Should normally only be supplied if the Wikidata id cannot be used.
 * The name of the Wikipedia article for the language. Should normally only be supplied if the Wikidata id cannot be used.


 * See the Substitutions section for instructions on syntax.
 * Defines how a language should be transliterated, which will be automatically applied to any terms in scripts that do not have their  value set to lua in Module:scripts/data. This is used by   in Module:languages.
 * Defines how a language should be transliterated, which will be automatically applied to any terms in scripts that do not have their  value set to lua in Module:scripts/data. This is used by   in Module:languages.


 * Set this to  to link the language's transliteration. For instance, Gothic has entries in Gothic script and entries for transliterations: . Otherwise, this can be a comma-separated list of script codes, which means that links are only applied to terms using those scripts.
 * Set this to  to link the language's transliteration. For instance, Gothic has entries in Gothic script and entries for transliterations: . Otherwise, this can be a comma-separated list of script codes, which means that links are only applied to terms using those scripts.


 * Set this to  to make the automatic transliteration override an any given manual transliteration. Otherwise, this can be a comma-separated list of script codes, which means that the override is only applied to terms using those scripts.
 * Set this to  to make the automatic transliteration override an any given manual transliteration. Otherwise, this can be a comma-separated list of script codes, which means that the override is only applied to terms using those scripts.


 * See the Substitutions section for instructions on syntax.
 * Defines replacements to create the display form of the text, which is the form actually displayed on the page. This is occasionally necessary if there is a recurring issue of editors adding the wrong character, which is sometimes an issue when two or more characters are easy to confuse. For example, the palochka, used in Cyrillic in many Caucasian languages, is frequently entered as  , or even Latin   or  . As this is an ongoing issue (even among native speakers), the easiest way to solve the problem is to automatically correct the display form for those languages. This is used by   in Module:languages.
 * Defines replacements to create the display form of the text, which is the form actually displayed on the page. This is occasionally necessary if there is a recurring issue of editors adding the wrong character, which is sometimes an issue when two or more characters are easy to confuse. For example, the palochka, used in Cyrillic in many Caucasian languages, is frequently entered as  , or even Latin   or  . As this is an ongoing issue (even among native speakers), the easiest way to solve the problem is to automatically correct the display form for those languages. This is used by   in Module:languages.


 * See the Substitutions section for instructions on syntax.
 * Defines replacements to create the entry name from the displayed form of a term. This can be used to remove certain diacritical marks according to the customs or standard practice of the language. For example, it is used to remove accent marks from Russian words ( &rarr;  ), or macrons from Latin or Old English words (  &rarr;  ), as these are not used in the normal written form of these languages. This is used by   in Module:languages.
 * Defines replacements to create the entry name from the displayed form of a term. This can be used to remove certain diacritical marks according to the customs or standard practice of the language. For example, it is used to remove accent marks from Russian words ( &rarr;  ), or macrons from Latin or Old English words (  &rarr;  ), as these are not used in the normal written form of these languages. This is used by   in Module:languages.


 * See the Substitutions section for instructions on syntax.
 * Defines replacements to create a category sort key from the page name. The purpose is to:
 * Remove any characters that should be ignored in sorting.
 * Replace characters with other characters, if the sorting rules for that language do not distinguish them. For example, in German, the characters "ä" and "a" are considered equivalent for sorting, and are both treated as "a".
 * Replace characters that should be sorted in different places with special characters that mimic that behaviour, (which is necessary due to MediaWiki software using the Unicode codepoint to determine sort order, which is often arbitrary). For instance, in Mongolian, the letter "ү" should be sorted after "у", but due to its codepoint it is sorted after the final letter "я" by default. As such, we can replace "ү" with "у" plus a character with a very high codepoint, which ensures that it is always sorted straight after. The data modules contain an in-built way to do this for the sake of convenience: with the above example, this would be done by using lua. Another character could be inserted straight after by using lua (and so on).
 * Note: the term is converted to lowercase before applying any substitutions, so you should not try to process capital letters (as it will not work). This is used by  in Module:languages.
 * Note: the term is converted to lowercase before applying any substitutions, so you should not try to process capital letters (as it will not work). This is used by  in Module:languages.


 * Set this to  for languages that distinguish between the  (such as some Turkic languages).
 * Set this to  for languages that distinguish between the  (such as some Turkic languages).

Substitutions

 * lua, lua, lua and lua all use the same syntax, which is designed to be as flexible as possible:
 * If they are a string, then this is treated as the name of a dedicated module which will be used to generate the output. For example, lua refers to Module:sa-translit.
 * If they are a table, then it can contain two kinds of keys:
 * The keys lua, lua, lua and lua relate to text substitution (see below).
 * Script code keys are used to specify script-specific behaviour. These, in turn, can be strings (for dedicated modules) or tables (for text substitution). In addition, a value with the key Lua can be used as a fallback, which will be used if no specific behaviour is defined for that script.
 * Note: if script keys and text substitution keys are given in the same table, then the text substitution will be applied after the script-specific behaviour has completed. Ensure any fallback text substitutions are given as a subtable with key Lua if you want to avoid this. It is not possible to process the output of a script-specific module with another module, however: this should be done (for example) with a tail call in the first module.
 * Dedicated modules must take the arguments lua, where lua is the input text (usually the page name or input by the user), lua is the language code (not the language object), and lua is the script code (not the script object). For performance reasons, they should only be used when it is not possible to achieve the desired result via text substitution.
 * Text substitution replaces or removes certain characters (or sets of characters) for particular contexts. There are three ways to do this:
 * Using the lua and lua keys.
 * lua (and optionally lua).
 * Both of the above (in that order).
 * lua is paired with lua, and both of them must be tables that are organised pairwise: each element in lua is a pattern to identify which characters in the term to replace, while the corresponding element in lua defines what to replace them with (as arguments to lua).
 * If the replacement is not present (or if it is lua or lua), then any matching characters are removed altogether. This means that the lua list can be longer than the lua list, and an empty replacement will be assumed for any elements in lua that have no counterpart in lua.
 * The tables can contain literal characters, or the patterns (a simplified form regular expressions) that are used by the standard Scribunto lua function. See the Scribunto reference manual for more information. Note that patterns make double substitutions a viable way to achieve more complex results. See the Latin sortkey for Mandarin as an example of this.
 * lua is a string which contains characters that will be removed after the text is decomposed. For instance, if lua is a combining acute accent, all acute accents will be stripped, even if they are part of precomposed characters (such as or ). Despite the name, the characters to be stripped need not be diacritics: for instance, including an apostrophe would remove all apostrophes (though be careful with hyphens, which must be be escaped as lua).
 * Furthermore, if lua is given, then it is possible to specify a lua table, which prevents specific characters from having their diacritics stripped. For instance, if lua is a combining diaeresis, but lua contains lua, then any instances of  will remain unchanged. On the other hand, an instance of   would still become   (unless lua is also added to lua).

Formerly supported values

 * This data is now located in the extra data modules; see Module:languages and Template:language extradata documentation.
 * This data is now located in the extra data modules; see Module:languages and Template:language extradata documentation.


 * Now.
 * Now.


 * Now.
 * Now.