Language and script

A government site serves people in the languages they read. The system has to render them, and tell assistive technology which one it is reading.

Diacritics test

Every diacritic below should render in the same weight and size as the letters around it. If one looks lighter, thinner or boxed, the font stack has a gap on your device. Report it.

Yoruba

Ẹ̀tọ́ ọmọ orílẹ̀-èdè ni láti gba ìwé ìrìnnà. Ẹ kú iṣẹ́.

Hausa

Ƙasar Najeriya ta ɗauki ɓangaren ƴan ƙasa da muhimmanci.

Igbo

Ọ bụ ikike gị ịnweta akwụkwọ ikike ije. Ndeewo.

Ewe

Dukɔa ƒe dɔwɔƒewo le amesiame si. Akpe.

Wolof

Jëfandikoo ab sërwis bu réew mi mooy sa àq.

Swahili

Huduma za serikali ni haki ya kila raia.

French

Les services publics sont accessibles à tous les citoyens.

Portuguese

Os serviços públicos são acessíveis a todos os cidadãos.

Arabic

الخدمات الحكومية حق لكل مواطن.

Sample sentences are illustrative, not official translations. Corrections welcome.

Tell the browser the language

Set lang on the html element, and again on any passage in another language. Screen readers switch voice, browsers pick the right hyphenation and quotation marks, and search engines index correctly.

<html lang="en">
…
<p lang="ha">Barka da zuwa.</p>

A country pack can set a default language for its banner strings. Senegal's is French, so the examples on this site switch to French when you select it, and each translated string is marked with lang="fr".

Right-to-left

Arabic is official in a third of the continent. Every component is written with logical properties, so setting dir="rtl" on html mirrors the layout: borders, indents, chevrons, the select caret and the start arrow all move to the other side. Preview Morocco at the top to see every example on this site mirrored.

<html lang="ar" dir="rtl">

For a passage in Arabic inside a left-to-right page, set dir="rtl" and lang on that element only. Numbers, phone numbers and reference codes keep their own direction automatically.

Numbers, dates and money

• Write dates as day, month, year, in words where there is room: 27 March 1990.
• Ask for dates in three fields. See the date of birth pattern.
• Currency symbol and position come from the pack. Nigeria writes ₦35,000; Senegal writes 35 000 F CFA.
• Phone numbers are written with spaces, never dots or dashes: 0803 000 0000.