Template talk:Language with name

Usage
This template should not be used directly in individual articles. Instead, a template with the name lang-xx shold be created, where the xx is the ISO 639 language code. The contents of this template should take the form:

Where xx is again the ISO 639 code, and language-name is the name of the language.

In turn, when calling a lang-xx template, it should be called in the form:

Example
The lang-ar template contains the following text:

If it is called as follows:

لووووول

it yields: لووووول

This template is very harmful
This has to be some kind of record in meta-template harmfulness. I'm stunned that people would go to this much trouble, creating so many complicated templated just to avoid typing a few extra letters. In most cases the amount of characters saved is amazingly small and people actually use some of the sub-templates to replace existing links at times. Please don't create any more of these. Ever.

Peter Isotalo 20:19, 15 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Please see related talk at template talk:lang-uk. These templates are useful and cause no harm, but are being unilaterally removed by this user.  —Michael Z. 2005-10-16 22:27 Z 


 * I agree this is rather harmful, but I'm not going to edit-war about it :) dab (𒁳) 10:35, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Similar template
ko:Template:Llang seems to achieve a similar effect by including ko:Template:언어 이름 (언어 이름 = “language name(s)”), but without the need of creating dozens of other templates. If you like its approach, perhaps something like that can replace this template and most lang-xx templates.—Wikipeditor 05:44, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

No italics
I've created a variant, LangWithNameNoItals, to be used for languages whose writing systems do not lend themselves to being written in italics (Hebrew, East Asian languages, etc.) —Angr 11:04, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
 * this template now forces no italics either. Italics are rather inserted in the "lang-xx" templates transcluding this one. dab (𒁳) 10:34, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

iw
Add no:Mal:LangWithName (Why so many templates protected so only administrators at en:wp can edit them?) Nsaa 18:04, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Done. A lot of templates are protected here to prevent vandalism, since vandalism on templates can affect many pages. Many templates are being changed so the documentation and interwikis are on a subpage so they can be edited without administrator assistance, but this one hasn't been changed over yet. --- RockMFR 23:21, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
 * It is now. Rich Farmbrough, 22:54 17 December 2008 (UTC).

Bolding problem with this template.
See, for example, the Filipino language article. the relevant wikitext there is "Filipino language (Wikang Filipino)", which renders here as "Filipino language (Wikang Filipino)". However, in the Filipino language article, it renders improperly (and in violation of WP:LEDE, "do not boldface foreign names not normally used in English") as "Filipino language (Filipino: Wikang Filipino)". This is because this template tries to place a self-referential wikilink.

It seems to me that the fix for this would involve magic words and parser functions&mdash;about which I am aware but which I don't often use. Could someone who is a better template coder than I please fix this? Thanks. -- Boracay Bill (talk) 06:05, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Delinking
I added an optout, no, to make this template not link the language names (should be useful in articles where you're using it over and over and there are overlinking concerns). To make it functional in the shell templates, however, "" or something alone those lines needs to be added to the templates that call this one. For example, I did this to a bunch of the Chinese templates; this make it so someone can use and have it remove the links (for example, in the lede paragraph of Not One Less).

Anyway, whoever wants to help out is welcome to add this code to the other templates to expand the functionality of this, since there are thousands of these templates and I'm in no mood to do it to all of them (I basically just updated the few templates that I myself use). r ʨ anaɢ talk/contribs 03:12, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Not using a "language" suffix redirects
Could someone help fix the issue with articles that don't include the suffix "... language" in their article-titles, e.g. Latin is the actual title, but lang-la links to Latin language. Please and thank you. :) -- Quiddity (talk) 17:26, 1 July 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't know of a way to do something like that automatically, but I guess we could hard-code the language codes into this template for languages such as Latin ("la") so the "language" part doesn't show up in the link. However, I gotta ask if it's really that big of a deal and worth the hassle?  As long as "Foo language" properly redirects to "Foo", what seems to be the problem?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 1, 2010; 17:58 (UTC)
 * For impetus, I thought we generally tried to fix, or avoid using, redirects in templates. Someone else had requested a fix at Template talk:Lang-la 2 years ago; I was seconding the query.
 * But you're probably right, that it's not worth adding extra template-complexity just to fix redirect(s).
 * Perhaps if someone else knows of many other languages that have the same issue, a fix might become warranted. -- Quiddity (talk) 00:35, 2 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Hmm, you are right about the redirects in templates... I forgot about that. Here's another suggestion then.  Instead of overloading this template with the conditionals which will be processed every time but are only going to kick in for a handful of cases (such as Latin), why not copy this template verbatim to another title (such as LangWithShortName), tweak it so the "language" part doesn't show up, and have lang-la (and other similar templates, if someone can think of any) call it instead?  Granted, we'll have two almost identical templates, but I think considering how heavily this template is used it would be an acceptable compromise?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 2, 2010; 02:01 (UTC)
 * I found another language that has a redirect issue. The template creates a link to Serbian Cyrillic language. "Serbian Cyrillic" is not a language, but rather one of two standard writing systems for the Serbian language (along with Latin). "Serbian Cyrillic language" is a redirect to Serbian Cyrillic alphabet. — Dale Arnett (talk) 21:37, 12 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Redirects exist for a reason. Just document the limitation in the template, as I have at Template:Lang-en-GB/doc, and don't complicated the parser code. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿ ¤ þ  Contrib.  12:56, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Colon has to be escaped or definition lists get hosed
Please, ASAP, change the line: }}: &lt;noinclude> to }}&amp;#58; &lt;noinclude>

Without this fix, this template cannot be used in ;/: wkimarkup definition lists without causing them to barf.

Template structured glossary format
tyre: tire: A resilient wheel covering usually made of vulcanized rubber. tyre: tire: A resilient wheel covering usually made of vulcanized rubber.

Results: ✅ Correct.

Manually-formatted wikimarkup
; British English&amp;#58; tyre ; American English&amp;#58; tyre : A resilient wheel covering usually made of vulcanized rubber.
 * British English: tyre
 * American English: tire
 * A resilient wheel covering usually made of vulcanized rubber.

Results: ✅ Correct.

Wikimarkup + Template:Language with name
;  ;   : A resilient wheel covering usually made of vulcanized rubber.
 * A resilient wheel covering usually made of vulcanized rubber.
 * A resilient wheel covering usually made of vulcanized rubber.
 * A resilient wheel covering usually made of vulcanized rubber.

Results: FAIL

— SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿ ¤ þ  Contrib.  13:04, 1 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes check.svg Done Anomie⚔ 04:58, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

This scheme should be streamlined
Instead of having individual templates for every language transcluding this meta template we should have one template only with a parameter for language. As it stands now, if we add a parameter to this template, as I'm going to propose next, then each of the transcluding templates will have to be updated, including user instructions. That is exceedingly cumbersome and impractical. __meco (talk) 09:28, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

Request for added parameter
I propose a new parameter be added to this template,, which, when active, will cause the name of the language to be suppressed altogether. The cases where this would be used are when the foreign-language term precedes the English name. Then the only effect of using the template would be to categorize the article into the relevant multilingual support category.

A more neat solution to this would perhaps be to modify the existing  parameter to handle a different set of values. That would probably mean to give it a new name, e.g., with the possible values yes (default), unlink and no. This proposal must be seen in connection with my proposal for streamlining this scheme altogether in the previous section. __meco (talk) 09:39, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

Linking language name
WP:OVERLINK says languages are not usually linked. This template links the language name by default; shouldn't that be changed? Ihardlythinkso (talk) 03:52, 20 January 2014 (UTC)
 * I think I agree: Obviously the more obscure the language, the stronger the case for linking, especially if it is out of linguistic context. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 16:24, 4 July 2014 (UTC).

Suggestion: An optional literal translation
Hi,

I am an admin, so I can edit this template, but, since it is high use, I thought I should discuss my idea here first.

I think it would be really useful to be able to have an optional literal translation. Then we could have something like the following:


 * The Prime Minister of Italy (Italian: Presidente del Consiglio dei Ministri, literal translation: President of the Council of Ministers) is the head of government of the Italian Republic.

I am open to suggestion on formatting, for example we could have some kind of abbreviation.

Yaris678 (talk) 19:45, 26 June 2014 (UTC)


 * I've done some work in the sandbox. What do we think of this?
 * For the benefit of future readers, I will subst the same wikicode below, so that people will know what the template looked like, if it is edited further.
 * &#58; Presidente del Consiglio dei Ministri
 * Yaris678 (talk) 15:29, 4 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Your subst is another sandbox... so I subt'd that! I think it is a good idea.  Is it worth introducing a "link=yes" parameter which would make linking the language name default to no-link, per the above section? All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 16:27, 4 July 2014 (UTC).
 * Your subst is another sandbox... so I subt'd that! I think it is a good idea.  Is it worth introducing a "link=yes" parameter which would make linking the language name default to no-link, per the above section? All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 16:27, 4 July 2014 (UTC).


 * "literally" might be enough (or even "lit." if this were print). And one minor thing, I don't think "small" text is appropriate or needed.  All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 16:29, 4 July 2014 (UTC).


 * Agreed on both counts. "Lit:" without additional markup is clear enough. I concur that this is a welcome feature, if one that we might want to warn against using too much. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 16:54, 4 July 2014 (UTC)
 * I have removed the small-text markup and used the abbreviation. I've used the capitalisation and punctuation suggested by Rich.  New subst:
 * &#58; Presidente del Consiglio dei Ministri
 * Feel free to edit the sandbox yourselves.
 * Yaris678 (talk) 03:16, 5 July 2014 (UTC)

Roll out
I have applied the change to Template:Language with name and Template:Lang-it. No one has objected to it. Is it time to roll out the change to all the other Lang-xx templates?

What do we think the best way of doing that is? A bot? AWB? One big push? Slowly but surely?

Yaris678 (talk) 11:43, 15 August 2014 (UTC)
 * I would suggest doing half a dozen of the most common languages. This should encourage any criticism at the cost of little effort (and while reverting is easy). Give it a few days then use AWB for the rest.  All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 15:32, 15 August 2014 (UTC).

Some questions/suggestions regarding this template
 It Is Me Here  t /  c  18:19, 1 September 2014 (UTC)
 * 1) Do all Lang-x templates templates use Language with name (or, at least, are they all supposed to)? As far as I can tell, Lang-grc doesn't, for instance.
 * 2) If they don't (i.e. intentionally), would it be possible for them to all be converted to use it? That way, they would all get to use links.
 * 3) While we're on it, could we supplement links with:
 * 4) A parameter (something like no) to avoid printing the language name altogether (useful if you're using more than one lang-fr or whatever in a row, giving you in read mode e.g. "This comes from the French: φ and χ", instead of "This comes from the French: φ and the French: χ")?
 * 5) A parameter (something like &amp;#32;) to avoid the colon being printed after the name of the language (it might sometimes fit the sentence the template is embedded in better)?
 * re 3.1: edit proposal is below (no would prevent showing the name).
 * re 1, 2: Same question for me. I'd like to see it in lang-he, and for the same reason. Is there a reason they are not using this template?
 * ping -DePiep (talk) 00:46, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

Why the colon?
In every Wikipedia context I've seen, the colon in this template is unnecessary, ugly, and different from the usual formatting in other printed matter. Can anyone point to examples in professionally typeset material that uses the colon? In all the books I've looked at recently, you see things like
 * from French carton
 * this word, from the French carton, has now ...
 * from Greek τρόπος

and the like, and never
 * from French: carton
 * this word, from the French: carton, has now ...
 * from Greek: τρόπος

Why do we use the colon? I recommend we get rid of it. --Macrakis (talk) 22:02, 20 September 2014 (UTC)
 * re . See below for a edit request. -DePiep (talk) 01:10, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

Protected edit request on 16 October 2014
Please copy full Template:Language with name/sandbox code (this edit) into live template code. There are two changes:

Change 1: Parameter name added. Option no prevents mentioning of the language name at all.

Example (German; sandbox stack is in place as of today):

Regular:
 * &rarr;
 * &rarr;

New:
 * &rarr;

Goal 1: This option is useful when the template (and so the language name) the language name is not to be repeated in a sentence, paragraph or table that has multiple elements of the same language, while the template should be used for its other functions. (rephrase -DePiep (talk) 16:13, 16 October 2014 (UTC))

-DePiep (talk) 00:41, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

Change 2: Parameter sep} (for separator) added:

Regular
 * &rarr;

New:
 * &rarr;
 * &rarr;

Goal 2: the colon might not always be the right punctuation in a given situation (sentence). See also the two posts above.

Templates using this metatemplate, like lang-de, should follow (pass through parameters name and sep).
 * Next step

-DePiep (talk) 01:00, 16 October 2014 (UTC)
 * See also Template:Language with name/testcases. -DePiep (talk) 21:57, 16 October 2014 (UTC)


 * Support all of these. I don't want to implement the changes myself, since I suggested something similar above.  It Is Me Here  t /  c  11:13, 16 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Paused. I have put the request on hold, to research more changes. -DePiep (talk) 06:59, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

Problems with Template:Lang-la
There's a little annoyance that I have noticed. lang-la produces the redirecting link Latin, which redirects to Latin. It seems lang-la uses language with name to create the link. I don't understand how this template works, so I can't answer this question: Is there a way that language with name can be modified to produce the sequence x instead of x in the cases of languages like Latin and Old English, whose article names do not end in language? — Eru·tuon 02:32, 18 December 2014 (UTC)
 * There would be no advantage to this, since all the redirects are in place. The good sense is to keep the template as simple as possible to use and to maintain. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 23:27, 24 July 2015 (UTC).

Requirements of parameters for lang-x template
Hi, Kindly enable the parameters links and lit for as in. Reference: see. (harith (talk) 12:21, 28 September 2015 (UTC))
 * Would you kindly provide a list of templates needing to be changed? How many are protected? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:04, 28 September 2015 (UTC)
 * ✅ I think. Let me know if there are any others. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 19:56, 28 September 2015 (UTC)
 * , I have not checked all, but the ones I have noted that needed to changed are as follows, the bold ones are those I wanted to change yesterday, but somehow missed: (harith (talk) 02:46, 29 September 2015 (UTC))

(may use italics) (parameter lit only) (parameter lit only) .


 * a lot of these are not protected. Could you just list those that you need help with? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:41, 29 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Hi, Thanks for the notification, the ones needed help are, , and . ( harith &middot; discuss ) 03:23, 30 September 2015 (UTC)
 * ✅ &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:32, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

Abbreviation for literally
The abbreviation for "literally" should marked up semantically. The lightweight option is lit. which returns: lit. . A complete example would be: déjà vu, lit. already seen instead of &#58; déjà vu Thoughts? — LLarson &#160; (said&#8239;&&#8239;done) 17:58, 21 January 2016 (UTC)


 * I updated the sandbox with this proposal, and updated lang-fr/sandbox, lang-ht/sandbox, and lang-de/sandbox, to look to the sandbox instead of the live version of the template. All the pieces come together in testcases, where the demonstration now is live. — LLarson   (said &amp; done) 20:41, 24 March 2016 (UTC)


 * I submitted this proposal almost three months ago and presented a modified sandbox with testcases almost three weeks ago and there have been no objections. Would you consider updating the template? — LLarson   (said &amp; done) 21:16, 12 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Done. Seems straightforward enough. We shouldn't add that around every abbreviation everywhere. We don't need it for "Dr[.]", for example, and it would be pointless if done to an abbr. used shortly after the expanded version, since it's already clear what it means in context. But it makes sense in a case like this, where it's usually the first (possibly only) occurrence on the page. The only downside I can think of is if it's used several times in the same block of text, e.g. to translate an English colloquial phrase into rough but not literal versions in 5 other languages. We don't do that often, though.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  21:00, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

Single quotes for value of "lit" parameter
Per MOS:SINGLE, it should also be generating single quotes around the gloss supplied in lit (i.e. appearing after the text " lit. ". I've implemented this in the sandbox, so the test cases in the above thread also testcase this. I implemented it as , so that it does not accidentally trigger any parsing problems, e.g. when used with a value that leads or ends with the same character, which would put two in a row and turn on italicization accidentally.  The only downside I can think of is that in a few cases where people have included single quotes around a value manually (e.g. as  that it will produce output like: Spanish &#58; mi casa es su casa, lit. &apos;'my house is your house'&apos;. But this is not a big problem. It just looks like double quotes (which many cases already incorrectly have), and it's not any more incorrect that the majority use (no quotes at all) that we're stuck with in the vast majority of cases. A bot can fix it; just look for any string in this template, occurring after  that both begins and ends with a   (or, while we're at it, any other quotation-character pairs). I could probably cobble up the regular expression to do this myself. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  21:29, 13 April 2016 (UTC)
 * You know I’m pretty fond of you and your work, but this doesn’t look quite right to me; apologies if I got the order of operations wrong, but I brought it up on MOS talk instead of here. Thank you, again. — LLarson   (said &amp; done) 16:48, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

Overhauling the lang-xx templates for more selective italics behavior
Please see: Template_talk:Lang

— SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ &gt;ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ&lt;  07:17, 30 October 2017 (UTC)

Effect of label parameter on lit.
In the documentation (for example, near the bottom of Template:Lang-la), the label parameter description says, "If 'none', suppresses language link and label". However, it also seems to suppress the 'lit.' which is normally generated by the lit parameter, and not just the language label. Is this intended, and if so, should it be changed so that there is a separate control for the lit label?

Compare setting label=none using Template:Lang-la: salve salve

with setting labels=no using Template:Korean:

The implementation of label=none and labels=no, respectively, is different. Even though Template:Korean uses Template:Lang, the plaintext lit label remains even when the labels parameter is off. I'm not sure which one is better for usability and complexity, but I do wonder about it. ChromeGames923 (talk) 02:52, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

Edit request 2021
Why the colon? - The matter has been raised by Macrakis since 2014, but nobody cared, apparently.

I propose to add an optional parameter to suppress the colon, in order to make the text sound more natural in sentences like: Instead of the present code:
 * The surname 'Example' comes from the Latin domus, lit. 'home', following example sentence about the surname.
 * this word, from the French carton, has now...
 * The surname 'Example' comes from Latin: domus, lit. 'home', following example sentence about the surname.
 * this word, from French: carton, has now...

The colon is often useful, but it breaks the natural flow in some contexts. Est. 2021 (talk · contribs) 16:53, 11 February 2021 (UTC)


 * Thanks for coming back to this. Suppressing the colon would certainly be useful in continuous text, as you mention. But I think the colon is also superfluous in other contexts. I am pretty sure that standard reference works do not use colons in this way, but I'll have to wait for the libraries to reopen to leaf through a few.... --Macrakis (talk) 17:15, 11 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Yeah, DePiep made a similar statement. Est. 2021 (talk · contribs)
 * 2014, when I was involved here, is long ago (remember, those times before corona!). Also I'm not this good in English grammar/sentencing/spelling. So I give it a pass if you don't mind. (I will add TemplateData to have WP:TPU active in March). -DePiep (talk) 18:10, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

Obsolete?
Hi, where is the usage of this template? Is this template obsolete? Hooman Mallahzadeh (talk) 17:25, 13 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Click on "What links here" in the left sidebar to see where a template is used, in this case in over 9,000 articles. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:18, 13 January 2022 (UTC)
 * First item of above link says it is used in the article Alaska, but I still can not find any usage of Template:Language with name in the below link:
 * https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Alaska&action=edit
 * If you can find it, please mention that to me.Hooman Mallahzadeh (talk) 19:35, 13 January 2022 (UTC)
 * I found that, it is used in Template:Lang-rus.

Template-protected edit request on 13 January 2022
To inherit italic property of first argument text from templates like "Template:Lang-rus" to this template and from this template to the template Template:Lang and then pass to Module:Lang, please add this argument " italic= " i.e., change to that has an additional argument i.e. " italic= ". You can test this functionality in Template:Language with name/sandbox and Template:Language with name/testcases. I.e., " " results in "" that is not italic. And " " results in "" that is italic. But the output of déjà vu is déjà vu that is incorrectly still italic. So by this small modification i.e., "adding argument italic= " italic property is inherited.

Thanks, Hooman Mallahzadeh (talk) 16:25, 13 January 2022 (UTC)
 * ✅.  P.I. Ellsworth &numsp;- ed.  put'r there 02:33, 14 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Is the default value "unset" in " italic= " true? If it should be italic in the default case, set it to "yes" or remove "unset" from that argument. Thanks, Hooman Mallahzadeh (talk) 06:09, 14 January 2022 (UTC)
 * my limited understanding is that any value other than no results in italics. Do you mean that your intial request should have defaulted to "yes" instead of "unset"?  P.I. Ellsworth &numsp;- ed.  put'r there 04:36, 15 January 2022 (UTC)
 * ✅, makes no difference.  P.I. Ellsworth &numsp;- ed.  put'r there 12:53, 16 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Greetings User:Paine_Ellsworth. It seems that the code tweek affected Template:Lang-ka and now all Georgian script-written texts are in Italic. Can you please tweek in a way that Georgian is not affected? Regards, An emperor /// Ave 16:29, 16 January 2022 (UTC)
 * To do that, we should set " italic=no " in the template Template:Lang-ka, but in this template, we should set "italic" to "yes" value as the default value. Hooman Mallahzadeh (talk) 16:46, 16 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Lang-ka is .  P.I. Ellsworth &numsp;- ed.  put'r there 02:10, 17 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Thank you dear colleagues! Regards, An emperor /// Ave 18:05, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Additional languages?
Is this an appropriate place to discuss which language templates should exist? It is rare, but I would like to be able to tag words or phrases from Moriori. If appropriate, I can happily clone another template at Lang-rrm, using the proposed ISO 639-3 code listed at its article. — HTGS (talk) 21:47, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

Redirect from Language name
I noticed a difference between the English Wikipedia and the versions in other languages. For example, on Wikipedia in other languages will result in, while here these redirects don't even exist. Same for, , , , etc.

Shouldn't we allow that? Est. 2021 (talk · contribs) 16:16, 15 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Probably not. Templates should be named for what they do, and we would end up with a confusing mix of template purposes. See French, Spanish, Japanese, and others that already exist and point to a variety of template types. I would prefer that those templates did not exist either, or were template disambiguation pages. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:26, 15 October 2022 (UTC)