View source for Template:Wikipedia languages/core/doc

{{Documentation subpage}}
{{used in system|in [[MediaWiki:Statistics-footer]]}}
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This is the /core template for {{Tl|Wikipedia languages}}, which is the template for the "Wikipedia languages" section on the [[Main Page|main page]].

The template is used to ensure a consistent formatting of the links, which hasn't always been the case (for some time, the Japanese and Chinese links were within {{Tl|Lang}}, which categorized the main page within {{Cl|Articles containing Japanese-language text}} and {{Cl|Articles containing Chinese-language text}}.

== Technical part ==
The links of this template show a mouseover, which is the English language name of the language and its IS0 639 code within brackets. To determine the English name, it calls #language parser function. Furthermore, there is a "lang" attribute so that browsers recognize it's a non-English text and treat it properly. The text of the link then uses the parser function <code><nowiki>{{#language:}}</nowiki></code>, which displays the language's native name as it's used by MediaWiki, e.g. within the interwiki links. This is done to ensure consistency with the interwiki links in the sidebar.

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