AnyTool
Your files never leave your device. All processing happens locally in your browser.

How do I detect what language a text is written in?

Paste or type your text into AnyTool Language Detection. It instantly identifies the most likely language with a confidence score and a ranked list of alternatives, names the writing system (Latin, Cyrillic, Arabic, CJK and more), and breaks multilingual text down language by language. Everything runs in your browser, so your text is never uploaded.

  • Ranked top language candidates with confidence scores
  • Writing-system detection across 20+ scripts
  • Per-segment breakdown for mixed-language text
  • Native name, ISO code and flag for each match
  • Optional on-device Chrome AI detector, with a bundled fallback — 100% client-side

What is

Language Detection

Language detection is the automatic identification of the natural language a piece of text is written in, typically by analysing its writing system and comparing character n-gram and common-word patterns against statistical profiles for many languages, then returning the closest matches ranked by confidence.

Text Tools

Related terms

Language IdentificationScript DetectionCharacter N-gramUnicode Script

Frequently Asked Questions

No. All detection runs in your browser, so your text never leaves your device and the tool works offline.

The bundled detection engine and all script analysis run locally in JavaScript with no server round-trip, no account and no tracking. If your browser exposes the on-device Chrome AI language detector, that also runs entirely on your machine — nothing is ever sent to a server.

Accuracy is high for a sentence or more; very short snippets or single words are harder and may rank several languages closely.

AnyTool blends three signals — Unicode writing-system analysis, character-trigram profiles in the franc style, and common-word frequency — so a sentence or two usually identifies the language confidently. Short fragments and look-alike languages such as Spanish versus Portuguese can be ambiguous, which is why the tool always shows a ranked list of candidates rather than a single guess.

Yes. It splits the text into paragraphs or sentences and reports the most likely language for each segment.

For multilingual documents the tool produces a per-segment breakdown, detecting the dominant language of each paragraph or sentence and listing them so you can see exactly where the text switches between languages.

It identifies 30-plus languages and over 20 writing systems, including Latin, Cyrillic, Arabic, Greek, Devanagari, CJK, kana and Hangul.

Writing-system detection covers scripts such as Latin, Cyrillic, Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, Devanagari, Bengali, Thai, Han, Hiragana, Katakana and Hangul. Language identification covers major European, Slavic, East Asian and South-East Asian languages, with disambiguation for look-alike pairs such as Russian versus Ukrainian and Simplified versus Traditional Chinese.

Detailed Explanation

Methodology

How the Language Detector Works

AnyTool Language Detection identifies the language of text entirely in the browser by blending three signals. First it counts characters by Unicode script to fix the writing system. Then, for each candidate language, it scores common-word frequency against bundled top-word dictionaries, matches character trigrams in the franc style, and checks diacritic fingerprints to separate look-alike Latin languages. The blended scores are ranked into a candidate list where the best match is normalised to the highest confidence.

  • Unicode script analysis covers 20+ writing systems
  • Character-trigram (n-gram) profiles follow the franc approach
  • Common-word frequency uses bundled top-word dictionaries per language
  • Diacritic fingerprints disambiguate Spanish, French, Polish, Czech and others
  • All computation is client-side JavaScript — no server round-trip
How It Works

Mixed-Language and Script Breakdown

Beyond a single best guess, the tool reports the share of each writing system in the text and splits multilingual input into segments — paragraphs, or sentences for a single block — detecting the dominant language of each. This makes it easy to see where a document switches between languages, and it distinguishes ambiguous pairs such as Russian versus Ukrainian, Indonesian versus Malay, and Simplified versus Traditional Chinese.

  • Per-script percentages show the makeup of the text
  • Per-segment detection surfaces every language in a mixed document
  • Russian versus Ukrainian separated by characteristic letters
  • Simplified versus Traditional Chinese separated by characteristic glyphs
  • Each result shows native name, ISO code and a flag indicator
Privacy & Security

On-Device AI and Privacy

When the browser exposes the experimental on-device LanguageDetector API (Chrome built-in AI), the tool can corroborate its bundled result with the model ranking, which also returns languages with confidence and runs entirely on the device. Where that API is absent, the bundled statistical engine is used, so detection always works offline. Either way the text never reaches a server, there is no account or tracking, and the page works after first load.

Language detection: in-browser (AnyTool) vs typical online detectors
CapabilityAnyToolTypical online detectors
Text handlingDetected in your browserOften posted to a server
PrivacyText never leaves deviceMay log or store submitted text
Ranked candidatesYes, with confidence scoresOften a single guess
Writing-system detectionExplicit, 20+ scriptsUsually hidden
Mixed-language breakdownPer-segment detectionRarely available
On-device AI optionYes, when browser supports itNo, server-side
Works offlineYes (PWA)No

Server-based detectors can retain pasted text in logs; AnyTool runs its bundled engine, and any on-device AI, locally and uploads nothing.