Language support

Language size and display style vary based on whether a character set is English-like, tall, or dense.


Language considerations

Glyphs

Each written language uses its own set of characters called glyphs. If your UI uses multiple languages, then your typography layout should vary depending on...

Each written language uses its own set of characters called glyphs.

If your UI uses multiple languages, then your typography layout should vary depending on the language. Languages have different average word lengths and heights, affecting how it appears across UIs.

Typographic glyphs

Length

Word length can vary greatly across languages, even those that use similar glyphs, such as English and German.

Word length can vary greatly across languages, even those that use similar glyphs, such as English and German.

English is often shorter than other European languages. For instance, German has many compound words that are longer, requiring more lines or line spacing.

Alignment

Some writing systems, like Arabic and Hebrew, are displayed with characters appearing from right to left. Those fonts may appear smaller than Latin ones at...

Some writing systems, like Arabic and Hebrew, are displayed with characters appearing from right to left. Those fonts may appear smaller than Latin ones at the same font-size, requiring adjustments to line spacing and alignment so that the typography works well in that UI for all languages.

Hebrew alignment appears right to left

Height

Many writing systems require more vertical space than English, so your UI should provide sufficient vertical space for these different systems.

Many writing systems require more vertical space than English, so your UI should provide sufficient vertical space for these different systems.

While Vietnamese is written with Latin, it has accents that add height to some letters, such as ớ.

Vertical typesetting

Vertical typesetting, though rarely used, can display characters vertically instead of horizontally. The typography of China, Japan, and Korea is typically monospaced, which means each...

Vertical typesetting, though rarely used, can display characters vertically instead of horizontally.

The typography of China, Japan, and Korea is typically monospaced, which means each letter occupies the same amount of space as other letters. It is often set left-to-right, top-to-bottom. It can also be set vertically: top-to-bottom and right-to-left.

Horizontal and vertical styles of typesetting

Language options

More than one typeface may need to be used in the same UI to display multilingual content, when each language uses a different writing system....

More than one typeface may need to be used in the same UI to display multilingual content, when each language uses a different writing system.

Writing systems can be grouped into three categories:

  • English-like
  • Tall
  • Dense

English-like typefaces

The languages of Western, Central, and Eastern Europe and much of Africa are typically written in the Latin alphabet. Vietnamese is a notable exception in that, while it uses a localized form of the Latin writing system, its accented glyphs can be much taller than those found in Western European languages. The Greek and Cyrillic writing systems are very similar to Latin.

Tall typefaces

Language scripts that require extra line height to accommodate larger glyphs, including South and Southeast Asian and Middle-Eastern languages, like Arabic, Hindi, Telugu, Thai, and Vietnamese.

Dense typefaces

Language scripts that require extra line height to accommodate larger glyphs, including Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.


Noto guidance

Noto is the default typeface for all languages not covered by Roboto. Derived from Droid, it’s designed to be visually harmonious across languages and scripts with compatible heights and stroke thicknesses.

The family has 93 scripts defined in Unicode version 6.0.

Dense script considerations

Noto Chinese, Japanese, and Korean (CJK) have seven weights that match Roboto, with the same weight settings as English. Type sizes smaller than title styles...

Noto Chinese, Japanese, and Korean (CJK) have seven weights that match Roboto, with the same weight settings as English.

Type sizes smaller than title styles should make adjustments to the Latin type scale.

Chinese and Japanese

Line height is slightly larger than Latin-based characters.

Line height pairing, Chinese and Japanese

Tall script considerations

Noto supports tall scripts used in South and Southeast Asian and Middle Eastern languages, including Arabic, Hindi, and Thai. Use regular weight, as medium weight...

Noto supports tall scripts used in South and Southeast Asian and Middle Eastern languages, including Arabic, Hindi, and Thai. Use regular weight, as medium weight is unavailable in Noto. Avoid using the bold weight, as bold is too heavy.

Type sizes smaller than title styles should make adjustments to the Latin type scale.

Thai and Devanagari

Tall script line height is slightly larger than Latin-based characters.

Line height pairing example, Thai and Devanagari

Language categories reference

Language categories reference

For ease of internationalization, Google has categorized languages into three categories: English-like, tall, and dense. English-like: Latin (except Vietnamese), Greek, Cyrillic, Hebrew, Armenian, and Georgian....

For ease of internationalization, Google has categorized languages into three categories: English-like, tall, and dense.

English-like: Latin (except Vietnamese), Greek, Cyrillic, Hebrew, Armenian, and Georgian.

Tall: Language scripts that require extra line height to accommodate larger glyphs, including South and Southeast Asian and Middle Eastern languages, like Arabic, Hindi, Telugu, Thai, and Vietnamese.

Dense: Language scripts that require extra line height to accommodate larger glyphs but have different metrics from tall scripts. Includes Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.

Code Description Category
af Afrikaans English-like
am Amharic English-like
ar Arabic (Modern Standard) Tall
az Azerbaijani English-like
bg Bulgarian English-like
bn Bengali Tall
ca Catalan English-like
cs Czech English-like
cy Welsh English-like
da Danish English-like
de German English-like
el Greek English-like
en English (US) English-like
en-GB English (UK) English-like
es Spanish (European) English-like
es-419 Spanish (Latin American) English-like
et Estonian English-like
eu Basque English-like
fa Persian Tall
fi Finnish English-like
fil Filipino English-like
fr French (European) English-like
fr-CA French (Canadian) English-like
gl Galician English-like
gu Gujarati Tall
hi Hindi Tall
hr Croatian English-like
hu Hungarian English-like
hy Armenian English-like
id Indonesian English-like
is Icelandic English-like
it Italian English-like
iw Hebrew English-like
ja Japanese Dense
ka Georgian English-like
kk Kazakh English-like
km Khmer Tall
kn Kannada Tall
ko Korean Dense
ky Kirghiz English-like
lo Lao English-like
lt Lithuanian English-like
lv Latvian English-like
mk Macedonian English-like
ml Malayalam Tall
mn Mongolian English-like
mr Marathi Tall
ms Malay English-like
my Burmese (Myanmar) Tall
ne Nepali Tall
nl Dutch English-like
no Norwegian (Bokmål) English-like
pa Punjabi Tall
pl Polish English-like
pt Portuguese (Brazilian) English-like
pt-PT Portuguese (European) English-like
ro Romanian English-like
ru Russian English-like
si Sinhala Tall
sk Slovak English-like
sl Slovenian English-like
sq Albanian English-like
sr Serbian (Cyrillic) English-like
sr-Latn Serbian (Latin) English-like
sv Swedish English-like
sw Swahili English-like
ta Tamil Tall
te Telugu Tall
th Thai Tall
tr Turkish English-like
uk Ukrainian English-like
ur Urdu Tall
uz Uzbek English-like
vi Vietnamese Tall
zh-Hans Chinese (Simplified) Dense
zh-Hant Chinese (Traditional) Dense
zu Zulu English-like

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