Wikipedia

Wikipedia:Language recognition chart

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This article describes a variety of simple clues one can use to determine what language a document is written in with high accuracy.

Characters

You can recognize text in a foreign language by looking up characters specific to that language. For some reason this is often more accurate than language recognition software, which pays little attention to the characters.

You can also recognise languages (especially those written in Latin text) by looking for common words / letter patterns.

e.g.

Latin alphabet (possibly extended)

Romance languages

Lots of Latin roots.

English

  • words: an, in, on, the, that

French

  • words: de, la, le, du, des, il, et;
  • words ending in -x, especially -aux or -eux;
  • many apostrophised contractions, i.e. words beginning with l' or d'
  • accented letters: à â ç è é ê î ô û, rarely ë ï, but never á í ì ó ò ú, and ù only in the word où

Spanish

  • characters: ¿ ¡ (inverted question and exclamation marks), ñ
  • word endings: -o, -a, -ción, -miento, -dad
  • angle quotation marks: « » (though "curly-Q" quotation marks are also used)

Italian

  • Almost every word ends in a vowel. Exceptions include non, il, per, con.
  • Grave accent (e.g., on à) almost always occurs in the last letter of words.

Catalan

  • character combination "l·l"
  • word endings: -o, -a, -es, ció, -tat

Romanian

  • characters: ă â î ş ţ
  • words: şi, de, la, a, ai, ale, alor, cu
  • word endings: -a, -ă, -u, -ul, -ţie (or -ţiune), -ment, -tate
  • Note that Romanian is sometimes written online with no diacritics, making it harder to identify

Portuguese

  • Common one-letter words: a, à, e, é, o
  • Common two-letter words: ao, as, às, da, de, do, os, um
  • Common three-letter words; aos, das, dos, ele, ela, não, por, que, uma, ums
  • Common endings: -ção, -ções, -dade
  • Most singular words end in vowels. Other singular words end in l, m, r, z
  • Plural words end in s

Walloon

  • Characters: å, é, è, ê, î, ô, û
  • Common digraphs and trigraphs: ai, ae, én, -jh-, tch, oe, -nn-, -nnm-, xh, ou
  • Common one-letter words: a, å, e, i, t', l', s', k'
  • Common two-letter words: al, ås, li, el, vs, ki, si, pô, pa, po, ni, èn, dj'
  • Common three-letter words: dji, nos, vos, les, ses, nén, rén, bén, pol, tel, mel
  • Common endings: -aedje, -mint, -xhmint, -ès, -ea, -ou, -owe, -yî, -åcion
  • apostrophes are followed by a space (preferably non breaking one), eg: l'_ome instead of l'ome.

Germanic languages

Dutch

  • letter sequences "ij", "aa";
  • words: het, op, een, voor (and compounds of voor).

German

  • umlauts (ä, ö, ü), eszet (ß)
  • common words: der, die, das, er, sie, es, ist, und, oder, aber
  • common endings: -en, -er, -ern, -st
  • long compound words
  • many capitalized words in the middles of sentences

Slavic languages

Polish

  • unusual consonant clusters "rz", "szcz", "prz", "trz";
  • words "i", "w";
  • word "się".

Czech

  • Visual abundance of letters "ž,š,ů,ě,ř";
  • words "je", "v".

Japanese in Romaji

  • words: "desu", "masu", "aru", "suru", esp. at end of sentences;
  • letters: nearly 50% vowels (a e i o u);
  • letters: no consonants, except "n" and "h", at end of words

Hungarian

  • letters Ő, Ű, ő and ű unique to Hungarian
  • words "a", "az", "ez", "egy", "és", "van"

Finnish

  • diacritics used: only ä and ö, but never õ
  • common words: sinä, on
  • common endings: -nen, -ka/-kä, -in
  • common letter combinations: yö, ei, äi
  • unusually high degree of letter duplication, both vowels and consonants

Estonian

  • similar to Finnish, except:
  • diacritics used: ä, ö, ü, õ, š, ž
  • words end in consonants more frequently than in Finnish

Latvian

  • uses diactrics: ā, ē, ī, ū č, š, ž ģ, ķ, ļ, ņ
  • does not have letters: q, w, y, x
  • very rare doubling of vowels
  • many words ending with the letter s
  • a period (.) after year numbers, for instance, 2004. gads
  • common words: "ir", "bija", "tika"

Vietnamese

  • Roman characters with many diacritical marks on vowels. See above.
  • Almost all written words are quite short (one syllable).
  • Words beginning with "ng"

VIQR

  • The following characters (often in combination) after vowels: ^ ( + ' ` ? ~ .
  • DD, Dd, or dd
  • The following character before punctuation: \

VNI

  • The digits 1-8 after vowels
  • The digit 9 after a D or d
  • The following character before numbers: \

Telex

  • The following characters after vowels: s f r x j
  • The following vowels, doubled up: a e o
  • The letter "w" after the following characters: a o u
  • DD, Dd, or dd

Minnan in Pe̍h-oē-jī

  • Many hyphenated words.
  • Roman characters with many diacritical marks on vowels. Unlike Vietnamese each character has at most one such mark.
  • Unusual combining characters, namely · (middle dot, always after "o") and | (vertical bar). - (macron) is also common.

Turkish

Turkish Alphabet

Lowercase: a b c ç d e f g ğ h ı i j k l m n o ö p r s ş t u ü v y z

Uppercase: A B C Ç D E F G Ğ H I İ J K L M N O Ö P R S Ş T U Ü V Y Z

Common Words

bu -- This

şu -- That

fakat -- But

Misc.

  • Look for word endings. Tense changes in Turkish verbs are created by adding suffixes to the end of the verb. Pluralizations occur by adding lar and ler.
    • Common Tense Changes: mış muş sun
    • Possessivity: im un ın in dur tır
    • Example: Yapmıştır ([He] did it; "Yap" is the base verb meaning "to do", "mış" changes verb to past tense, "tır" adds possessivity, stating who did it.)
    • Example: Oyunlar (Games; "Oyun" is a noun meaning "game", "lar" makes it plural.)
    • Example: Meyveler (Fruits; "Meyve" is a noun meaning "fruit", "ler" makes it plural.)

Chinese Mandarin

Pinyin

  • See Pinyin;
  • You may notice numbers after words; they represent tones.

Greek

Modern Greek is written with Greek alphabet in monotonic, polytonic or atonic, either according to Demotic (Mr. Triantafilidis) grammar or Katharevousa grammar. Some people write in Greeklish (Greek with Latin script) which is either Visual-based, orthographic or phonetic or just messed-up (mixed). The only official forms of Greek language are the Monotonic and Polytonic.

Normal Modern Greek (Greek Monotonic)

  • words "και", "είναι";
  • Each multi-syllable word has one accent/tone mark (oxia): ά έ ή ί ό ύ ώ
  • The only other diacritic ever used is the trema: ϊ/ΐ, ϋ/ΰ, etc.

Ancient or pre-1980's Greek (Greek Polytonic)

  • This is Katharevousa or some mixed form of Demotiki (Triantafilidis' grammar) and Katharevousa;
  • You will notice several accents/tones. Examples: ~ ` and oxia (looks like 'ί);
  • You may also notice this: ΐ, ΰ. ϊ, ϋ etc.

Greek Atonic

  • Was common in some Greek media (television);
  • You will see Greek characters without accents/tones;
  • words: "και, ειναι, αυτο".

Greek in Greeklish

  • Automated conversion software for Greeklish->Greek conversion exists. If you notice a Greeklish text it may be useful for the Greek el.wikipedia (after conversion).
  • Keep in mind: in Greeklish more than one characters may be used for one letter. (example: th for theta).

Orthographic Greeklish

  • words "kai", "einai".

Phonetic Greeklish

  • words "ke", "ine";
  • omega appears as o;
  • ei, oi appear as i;
  • ai appears as e.

Visual-based Greeklish

  • omega (Ω or ω) may appear as W or w;
  • epsilon (E) may appear as "3";
  • alpha (A) may appear as "4";
  • theta (Θ) may appear as "8";
  • upsilon (Y) may appear as "\|/";
  • More than one characters may be used for one letter.

Messed-up (Mixed) Greeklish

  • words "kai", "eine";
  • combines principles of phonetic, visual-based and orthographic Greeklish according to writer's idiosyncracy;
  • The most commonly used form of Greeklish.

Armenian language

Armenian can be recognised by its unique 38-letter alphabet:

Ա Բ Գ Դ Ե Զ Է Ը Թ Ժ Ի Լ Խ Ծ Կ Հ Ձ Ղ Ճ Մ Յ Ն Շ Ո Չ Պ Ջ Ռ Ս Վ Տ Ր Ց Ւ Փ Ք Օ Ֆ

Georgian language

Georgian language can be recognised by its unique alphabet.

ა ბ გდ ევ ზ ჱ თ ი კ ლ მ ნ ჲ ო პ ჟ რ ს ტ ჳ უ ფ ქ ღ ყ შ ჩ ც ძ წ ჭ ხ ჴ ჯ ჰ ჵ ჶ ჷ ჸ

Add your language here

If your language has distinguishable properties and is not listed here, then you may include information about it here to help people recognise articles written in that language.

Artificial languages

Esperanto

  • words: de, la, al, kaj
  • six unique letters: ĉ Ĉ ĝ Ĝ ĥ Ĥ ĵ Ĵ ŝ Ŝ ŭ Ŭ
  • words ending in -o, -a, -oj, -aj, -as

Klingon

  • When written in the Latin alphabet Klingon has the unusual property of a distinction in case; "q" and "Q" are different letters. This causes a large number of words that look quite strange to people who aren't used to it, for example: "yIDoghQo'", "tlhIngan Hol".

Lojban

  • starts with "ni'o" or ".i" (or "i");
  • has many words like "ko'a" "pi'o" etc;
  • all lowercase;
  • usually no punctuation except for dots.
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