Multilingual

Language Tags

Understand BCP 47 language tags and use the LANG() function to filter, compare, and work with labels in specific languages.

Common Language Codes

Wikidata uses BCP 47 language tags. The most common are two-letter ISO 639-1 codes.

Code	Language	Code	Language
en	English	zh	Chinese
fr	French	ja	Japanese
de	German	ko	Korean
es	Spanish	ar	Arabic
pt	Portuguese	ru	Russian
it	Italian	hi	Hindi

The LANG() Function

Use LANG(?variable) to get the language tag of a literal value. Combined with FILTER, this lets you select labels in specific languages.

Get Labels in a Specific Language

Run ↗

SELECT ?lang ?frenchLabel
WHERE {
  ?lang wdt:P31 wd:Q9143 .
  ?lang rdfs:label ?frenchLabel .

  # Filter to French labels only
  FILTER(LANG(?frenchLabel) = "fr")
}
LIMIT 20

Multilingual Function: LANG() returns language tag

Multiple Language Labels

Compare Labels Across Languages

Run ↗

SELECT ?lang ?en ?fr ?de ?es
WHERE {
  VALUES ?lang {
    wd:Q2005   # JavaScript
    wd:Q15777  # Python
    wd:Q15206  # Ruby
  }

  OPTIONAL { ?lang rdfs:label ?en . FILTER(LANG(?en) = "en") }
  OPTIONAL { ?lang rdfs:label ?fr . FILTER(LANG(?fr) = "fr") }
  OPTIONAL { ?lang rdfs:label ?de . FILTER(LANG(?de) = "de") }
  OPTIONAL { ?lang rdfs:label ?es . FILTER(LANG(?es) = "es") }
}

Multilingual Pattern: Side-by-side language comparison

Regional Language Variants

Some languages have regional variants indicated by subtags.

Code	Variant
zh-hans	Simplified Chinese
zh-hant	Traditional Chinese
pt-br	Brazilian Portuguese
en-gb	British English

Chinese Variants

Run ↗

SELECT ?city ?simplified ?traditional
WHERE {
  VALUES ?city { wd:Q956 wd:Q8686 wd:Q1490 }  # Beijing, Shanghai, Tokyo

  OPTIONAL { ?city rdfs:label ?simplified .
             FILTER(LANG(?simplified) = "zh-hans") }
  OPTIONAL { ?city rdfs:label ?traditional .
             FILTER(LANG(?traditional) = "zh-hant") }
}

Multilingual Regional variants: zh-hans vs zh-hant

LANGMATCHES Function

Use LANGMATCHES() to match language families including subtags.

Match Any Chinese Variant

Run ↗

SELECT ?item ?label (LANG(?label) AS ?langTag)
WHERE {
  ?item wdt:P31 wd:Q515 ;  # city
        wdt:P17 wd:Q148 ;    # China
        rdfs:label ?label .

  # Match any Chinese variant (zh, zh-hans, zh-hant, etc.)
  FILTER(LANGMATCHES(LANG(?label), "zh"))
}
LIMIT 30

Multilingual LANGMATCHES matches language families