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Quick start

This page looks up a language, follows its links to its family and ancestors, and tells which script a word is written in. It assumes Polyglossa is installed: Installing has the coordinates.

Look up a language

Every code Wiktionary uses is there, and a lookup that may miss gives nothing instead of failing:

import com.fenakhay.polyglossa.Language

fun main() {
    val english = Language.of("en")
    println(english)                       // English (en)
    println(english.wikidata)              // Q1860
    println(english.aliases)               // [Modern English, New English]
    println(Language["xx"])                // null
    println("ang" in Language)             // true
    println(Language.named("Old English")) // Old English (ang)
}

import Polyglossa

let english = try Language.of("en")
print(english)                             // English (en)
print(english.wikidata ?? "")              // Q1860
print(english.aliases)                     // ["Modern English", "New English"]
print(Language["xx"] as Any)               // nil
print(Language.contains("ang"))            // true
print(Language.named("Old English")!)      // Old English (ang)

from polyglossa import Language

english = Language["en"]
print(english)                             # English (en)
print(english.wikidata)                    # Q1860
print(english.aliases)                     # ('Modern English', 'New English')
print(Language.get("xx"))                  # None
print("ang" in Language)                   # True
print(Language.named("Old English"))       # Old English (ang)

of fails for a code Wiktionary doesn't have: it throws IllegalArgumentException in Kotlin, PolyglossaError.unknownLanguage in Swift, and UnknownLanguageError in Python, where Language["xx"] fails the same way and Language.get gives None.

A language leads to its family, its ancestors and its scripts, and a family to its parent and its proto-language. The links are the objects themselves:

val english = Language.of("en")
english.family                             // Anglic (gmw-ang)
english.ancestors                          // [Early Modern English (en-ear)]
english.ancestors.first().ancestors        // [Middle English (enm)]
english.scripts.map { it.code }            // [Latn, Brai, Shaw, Dsrt]
english.family?.parent                     // Anglo-Frisian (gmw-afr)

let english = try Language.of("en")
english.family                             // Anglic (gmw-ang)
english.ancestors                          // [Early Modern English (en-ear)]
english.ancestors.first?.ancestors         // [Middle English (enm)]
english.scripts.map(\.code)                // ["Latn", "Brai", "Shaw", "Dsrt"]
english.family?.parent                     // Anglo-Frisian (gmw-afr)

english = Language["en"]
str(english.family)                        # 'Anglic (gmw-ang)'
[a.code for a in english.ancestors]        # ['en-ear']
[a.code for a in english.ancestors[0].ancestors]   # ['enm']
[s.code for s in english.scripts]          # ['Latn', 'Brai', 'Shaw', 'Dsrt']
english.family.parent.name                 # 'Anglo-Frisian'

Tell the script of a word

Detection works as Wiktionary's own findBestScript does, from the characters each script has:

import com.fenakhay.polyglossa.Language
import com.fenakhay.polyglossa.Script

Language.of("sh").detectScript("Москва")   // Cyrillic (Cyrl)
Language.of("sh").detectScript("Moskva")   // Latin (Latn)
Language.of("zh").detectScript("語言")      // Traditional Han (Hant)
Script.detect("Ελληνικά")                  // Greek (Grek), whatever the language

try Language.of("sh").detectScript("Москва")   // Cyrillic (Cyrl)
try Language.of("sh").detectScript("Moskva")   // Latin (Latn)
try Language.of("zh").detectScript("語言")      // Traditional Han (Hant)
Script.detect("Ελληνικά")                      // Greek (Grek), whatever the language

from polyglossa import Language, Script

Language["sh"].detect_script("Москва").code    # 'Cyrl'
Language["sh"].detect_script("Moskva").code    # 'Latn'
Language["zh"].detect_script("語言").code       # 'Hant'
Script.detect("Ελληνικά").code                 # 'Grek', whatever the language

Next

  • Languages: the kinds of language, etymology-only varieties and the varieties Wiktionary names.
  • Families and Scripts: the rest of the data.
  • Detecting scripts: how detection decides, and where it differs from Wiktionary.