How to Search Tweets by Language
To search tweets in one language on X, add lang: and the two-letter language code to your query, for example football lang:es for posts in Spanish.
To search tweets in one language on X, add lang: and the two-letter language code to your query, for example football lang:es for posts in Spanish. X detects each post’s language automatically. You can also pick a language from the dropdown in the Advanced search form.
Language filters are essential for regional research and for cutting noise from global topics. lang: sits with the word operators in the Twitter advanced search operators reference. This guide is one of the techniques in how to search tweets by keyword.
How Do You Filter X Search by Language?
You filter X search by language by adding lang: with an ISO language code, or by choosing a language under Words in the Advanced search form. X’s advanced search lets you search posts in a specific language (X Help Center). Listed below are the 3 steps.
- Type your keyword and the language code:
elections lang:de. - Press Enter.
- Open Latest for every match.
Common X Language Codes
X uses two-letter ISO 639-1 codes for most languages. Listed below are 12 common ones.
| Language | Code | Example |
|---|---|---|
| English | en |
ai lang:en |
| Spanish | es |
ia lang:es |
| Portuguese | pt |
futebol lang:pt |
| French | fr |
élection lang:fr |
| German | de |
wahl lang:de |
| Italian | it |
calcio lang:it |
| Turkish | tr |
deprem lang:tr |
| Arabic | ar |
كرة lang:ar |
| Japanese | ja |
地震 lang:ja |
| Korean | ko |
축구 lang:ko |
| Hindi | hi |
क्रिकेट lang:hi |
| Indonesian | in |
banjir lang:in |
Indonesian uses in on X rather than the ISO code id (twitter-advanced-search reference).
What Are X’s Special Language Codes?
X has special language codes for posts with no detectable language, such as posts that contain only hashtags, links or media. Listed below are the 7 special codes (twitter-advanced-search reference).
| Code | Finds posts that contain |
|---|---|
lang:und |
Text in an undetermined language |
lang:qam |
Only mentions |
lang:qct |
Only cashtags |
lang:qht |
Only hashtags |
lang:qme |
Only media links |
lang:qst |
Very short text |
lang:zxx |
Only media or a link card, with no text |
How Do You Search Several Languages at Once?
To search several languages, group the codes with uppercase OR: topic (lang:es OR lang:pt). To exclude a language, negate it: topic -lang:en. OR searches are covered in how to search multiple keywords on X with OR.
Why Does a Language Filter Miss Posts?
A language filter misses posts because X detects language automatically, and short or mixed-language posts are often classified wrongly or as undetermined. Add OR lang:und to catch unclassified posts, or search a keyword that only appears in the target language.
How to Collect Posts in One Language With apidojo
apidojo’s Tweet Scraper V2 on Apify has a tweetLanguage input that applies the language filter for you, so a dataset contains posts in one language only. The actor documents this with a keyword example in English (Apify).
{
"searchTerms": ["artificial intelligence"],
"tweetLanguage": "es",
"sort": "Latest"
}It costs $0.40 per 1,000 tweets. Language-filtered datasets are covered in how to collect tweets for sentiment analysis, and the full product is the apidojo Twitter Scraper.
Questions people ask
Does lang: use the author's language setting?
No, lang: uses the language X detects in the post itself.
Can you search by country instead of language?
Not reliably; location operators return few posts. Language plus local keywords works better.
What is the code for Chinese?
lang:zh covers Chinese posts.