# Language Values

This page lists the language code you can use in the user interface (UI) of your search engine, such as the search button. The language of you search engine also boosts results in that language; however it does not filter out results in other languages. For example, if you selected Chinese as your search engine language, Chinese webpages will be given higher priority over English webpages in the search results.

You can define the language either in the control panel or the [context file](https://developers.google.com/custom-search/docs/context#attributes). In the the **Basics** tab of the control panel, you select the language from the **Search engine language** drop-down list. In the context file, you define the value of `language` attribute of the `CustomSearchEngine` element, as in the following example:

```
<CustomSearchEngine volunteers="false"
                    language="en"
                    visible="false"
                    encoding="UTF-8">
</CustomSearchEngine>      
```

The following table enumerates the available values for the `language` attribute.

**Note:** If you do not specify a language, Programmable Search Engine will use `en` (English) as the default value.

| Language | Language Code Value |
|---|---|
| locale of your user | empty value (that is, `language=" "`) |
| Arabic | `ar` |
| Bulgarian | `bg` |
| Catalan | `ca` |
| Croatian | `hr ` |
| Chinese (Simplified) | `zh-Hans` |
| Chinese (Traditional) | `zh-Hant` |
| Czech | `cs` |
| Danish | `da` |
| Dutch | `nl` |
| English (default) | `en` |
| Filipino | `fil` |
| Finnish | `fi` |
| French | `fr` |
| German | `de` |
| Greek | `el` |
| Hebrew | `he` |
| Hindi | `hi` |
| Hungarian | `hu` |
| Indonesian | `id` |
| Italian | `it` |
| Japanese | `ja` |
| Korean | `ko` |
| Latvian | `lv` |
| Lithuanian | `lt` |
| Norwegian | `no` |
| Polish | `pl` |
| Portuguese | `pt` |
| Romanian | `ro` |
| Russian | `ru` |
| Serbian | `sr` |
| Slovak | `sk` |
| Slovenian | `sl` |
| Spanish | `es` |
| Swedish | `sv` |
| Thai | `th` |
| Turkish | `tr` |
| Ukrainian | `uk` |
| Vietnamese | `vi` |
[ ]

[Back to top](https://developers.google.com/custom-search/docs/ref_languages#top)