International Messages

The standard set of messages for built-in Wolfram Language functions are written in American English. In some versions of the Wolfram System, messages are also available in other languages. In addition, if you set up messages yourself, you can give ones in other languages.

Languages in the Wolfram System are conventionally specified by strings. The languages are given in English, in order to avoid the possibility of needing special characters. Thus, for example, the French language is specified in the Wolfram System as "French".

Setting the language to use for messages.

This tells the Wolfram Language to use French-language versions of messages:

$Language="French"

If your version of the Wolfram System has French-language messages, the message generated here will be in French:

Sqrt[a,b,c]

Messages in different languages.

When built-in Wolfram Language functions generate messages, they look first for messages of the form s::t::Language, in the language specified by (RefLink[$Language, paclet:ref/$Language]). If they fail to find any such messages, then they use instead the form s::t without an explicit language specification.

The procedure used by built-in functions will also be followed by functions you define if you call (RefLink[Message, paclet:ref/Message]) with message names of the form s::t. If you give explicit languages in message names, however, only those languages will be used.