# Detect User Language?

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/detect-user-language/66670>\
**Category:** General Usage\
**Created:** [August 19, 2021, 12:59pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/detect-user-language/66670 "2021-08-19T12:59:11Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Daneel](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/daneel/32/175_2.png) [@Daneel](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Daneel)\
**Post date:** [August 19, 2021, 12:59pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/detect-user-language/66670/1 "2021-08-19T12:59:11Z")

</div>

Is there a way to detect the default language that the user speaks? Presumably this would be the current operating system language. I’m trying to tailor the outputs to the user.

It would be great if it were a constant like `VERSION`.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![jling](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/jling/32/212909_2.png) [@jling](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/jling)\
**Post date:** [August 19, 2021, 1:06pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/detect-user-language/66670/2 "2021-08-19T13:06:06Z")

</div>

on linux at least:

```julia
julia> ENV["LC_ALL"]
"en_US.UTF-8"

julia> ENV["LANG"]
"en_US.UTF-8"

```

[https://stackoverflow.com/a/43935417/2960695](https://stackoverflow.com/a/43935417/2960695)

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Sukera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ce7236/32.png) [@Sukera](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Sukera)\
**Post date:** [August 19, 2021, 1:10pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/detect-user-language/66670/3 "2021-08-19T13:10:54Z")

</div>

That’s not such an easy thing to answer. On top of the system language, there are usually also one or more display languages, APIs for which are platform specific (and in the case of linux, sometimes distro specific). Do you have a target OS in mind?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Daneel](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/daneel/32/175_2.png) [@Daneel](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Daneel)\
**Post date:** [August 19, 2021, 1:13pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/detect-user-language/66670/4 "2021-08-19T13:13:47Z")

</div>

Windows and Linux are the target operating systems.