:lang()

:lang(<language-code> [,<language-code> ]*)
  /* ... */
}

<language-code>

A comma separated list of one or more <string>s that target an element with a language value according to BCP 47 language codes. Matching by language range is case-insensitive.

When selecting languages, there is implicit wildcard matching, so :lang(de-DE) will match de-DE, de-DE-1996, de-Latn-DE, de-Latf-DE, and de-Latn-DE-1996. Explicitly using wildcards must include a full match of a language subtag, so :lang("*-F*") is invalid but :lang("*-Fr") is valid.

In this example, the :lang() pseudo-class is used to match the parents of quote elements (<q>) using child combinators. Note that this doesn't illustrate the only way to do this, and that the best method to use depends on the type of document. Also note that Unicode values are used to specify some of the special quote characters.

HTML

<div lang="en">
  <q>This English quote has a <q>nested</q> quote inside.</q>
</div>
<div lang="fr">
  <q>This French quote has a <q>nested</q> quote inside.</q>
</div>
<div lang="de">
  <q>This German quote has a <q>nested</q> quote inside.</q>
</div>

CSS

:lang(en) > q {
  quotes: "\201C" "\201D" "\2018" "\2019";
}
:lang(fr) > q {
  quotes: "« " " »";
}
:lang(de) > q {
  quotes: "»" "«" "\2039" "\203A";
}

Result

The following example shows how to match multiple languages by providing a comma-separated list of language codes. It's also possible to use a wildcard to match languages in a given language range.

p {
  margin: 0;
}

CSS

/* Matches nl and de */
:lang("nl", "de") {
  color: green;
}

/* Omitting quotes & case-insensitive matching */
:lang(EN, FR) {
  color: blue;
}

/* Wildcard matching a language range */
:lang("*-Latn") {
  color: red;
}

HTML

<p lang="nl">Dit is een Nederlandse paragraaf.</p>
<p lang="de">Dies ist ein deutscher Satz.</p>
<p lang="en">This is an English sentence.</p>
<p lang="en-GB">Matching the language range of English.</p>
<p lang="fr">Ceci est un paragraphe français.</p>
<p lang="fr-Latn-FR">Ceci est un paragraphe français en latin.</p>

Result

• The :dir pseudo-class that matches by directionality of text
• HTML lang attribute
• HTML translate attribute
• RFC 5646: Tags for Identifying Languages (also known as BCP 47)