Template:Wikipedia languages/core/doc

This is the /core template for Wikipedia languages, which is the template for the "Wikipedia languages" section on the 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 Lang, which categorized the main page within and.

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. Furthermore, there is a "lang" attribute and the "xml:lang" attribute is automatically added by MEdiaWiki within the text so that browsers recognize it's a non-English text and treat it properly. The text of the link then uses the parser function, 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.