API Reference / API Parameters / queryLanguages
Type: list of strings
Engine default: []
Formerly: expectedLanguages
Parameter syntax
'queryLanguages' => ['language ISO code', ...]

Can be used in these methods:

About this parameter

Sets languages for language-specific settings such as plurals, stop words, and dictionaries for detecting words in CJK languages.

queryLanguages sets:

  • A default list of languages used by removeStopWords and ignorePlurals (if they’re enabled). For example, if you enable ignorePlurals, the engine will apply the languages set in queryLanguages.
  • Sets the dictionary for word-detecting in CJK languages (=Chinese “zh”, Japanese “ja”, or Korean “ko”). For this, you must place the CJK language first in queryLanguages’ list of languages. For example, to ensure that Chinese word recognition is based on a Chinese dictionary and not the general algorithm used for all languages, you must place Chinese in the first position of the list of languages. Likewise, Japanese and Korean must be first in the list to ensure proper dictionary-based parsing.

Usage notes

  • When working with Japanese data, you must also set “ja” in the indexLanguages parameter.
  • queryLanguages creates a default list of languages. This default can be overridden by any setting that uses the default. For example, if you set the default to English and French, you can set ignorePlurals to use the default but set removeStopWords to recognize only English stop words.
  • For optimum relevance, it’s recommended that you only enable languages used in your data.

You should always set queryLanguages and indexLanguages for your indices. If you don’t, the engine uses either the default (all supported languages) or the list of languages specified in ignorePlurals and removeStopWords. This can lead to unexpected search results.

List of supported languages

Afrikaans=af
Arabic=ar
Azeri=az
Bulgarian=bg
Bengali=bn
Catalan=ca
Czech=cs
Welsh=cy
Danish=da
German=de
Greek=el
English=en
Esperanto=eo
Spanish=es
Estonian=et
Basque=eu
Persian (Farsi)=fa
Finnish=fi
Faroese=fo
French=fr
Irish=ga
Galician=gl
Hebrew=he
Hindi=hi
Hungarian=hu
Armenian=hy
Indonesian=id
Icelandic=is
Italian=it
Japanese=ja
Georgian=ka
Kazakh=kk
Korean=ko
Kurdish=ku
Kirghiz=ky
Lithuanian=lt
Latvian=lv
Maori=mi
Mongolian=mn
Marathi=mr
Malay=ms
Maltese=mt
Norwegian Bokmål=nb
Dutch=nl
Norwegian=no
Northern Sotho=ns
Polish=pl
Pashto=ps
Portuguese=pt
Brazilian=pt-br
Quechua=qu
Romanian=ro
Russian=ru
Slovak=sk
Albanian=sq
Swedish=sv
Swahili=sw
Tamil=ta
Telugu=te
Thai=th
Tagalog=tl
Tswana=tn
Turkish=tr
Tatar=tt
Ukranian=uk
Urdu=ur
Uzbek=uz
Chinese=zh

Examples

Set the default query languages

In this example, Spanish (‘es’) is set as the default language for both ignorePlurals and removeStopWords

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$index->setSettings([
  'queryLanguages' => ['es'],
  'removeStopWords' => true,
  'ignorePlurals' => true
]);

Override query languages

In this example, the Spanish default for removeStopWords is overridden by adding Catalan (‘ca’) to its list of languages.

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$results = $index->search('query', [
  'removeStopWords' => ['ca', 'es']
]);

Set the correct dictionary for word detection

Placing ‘ja’ in the first position ensures that the Japanese dictionary will be used whenever the engine detects CJK logograms.

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$results = $index->search('query', [
  'queryLanguages' => ['ja', 'en']
]);
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