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Building queries for Search Posts

The search endpoints accept a single query with a GET request and return a set of historical Posts that match the query.  Queries are made up of operators that are used to match on a variety of Post attributes. 

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Table of contents

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Building a query

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Query limitations

Your queries will be limited depending on which access level you are using. 

If you have Basic or Pro access, your query can be 512 characters long for recent search endpoint. 

If you have Pro access, your query can be 1,024 characters long for full archive search endpoint. 

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Operator availability

While most operators are available to any developer, there are several that are reserved for certain access levels. We list which access level each operator is available to in the list of operators table using the following labels:

  • Core operators: Available when using any Project.
  • Advanced operators: Available when using a Project with certain access level

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Operator types: standalone and conjunction-required

Standalone operators can be used alone or together with any other operators (including those that require conjunction).

For example, the following query will work because it uses the #hashtag operator, which is standalone:

#xapiv2

Conjunction-required operators cannot be used by themselves in a query; they can only be used when at least one standalone operator is included in the query. This is because using these operators alone would be far too general, and would match on an extremely high volume of Posts.

For example, the following queries are not supported since they contain only conjunction-required operators:

has:media

has:links OR is:retweet

If we add in a standalone operator, such as the phrase "X data", the query would then work properly. 

"X data" has:mentions (has:media OR has:links)

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Boolean operators and grouping

If you would like to string together multiple operators in a single query, you have the following tools at your disposal:

AND logicSuccessive operators with a space between them will result in boolean “AND” logic, meaning that Posts will match only if both conditions are met. For example, snow day #NoSchool will match Posts containing the terms snow and day and the hashtag #NoSchool.
OR logicSuccessive operators with OR between them will result in OR logic, meaning that Posts will match if either condition is met. For example, specifying grumpy OR cat OR #meme will match any Posts containing at least the terms grumpy or cat, or the hashtag #meme.
NOT logic, negationPrepend a dash (-) to a keyword (or any operator) to negate it (NOT). For example, cat #meme -grumpy will match Posts containing the hashtag #meme and the term cat, but only if they do not contain the term grumpy. One common query clause is -is:retweet, which will not match on Retweets, thus matching only on original Posts, Quote Tweets, and replies. All operators can be negated, but negated operators cannot be used alone.
GroupingYou can use parentheses to group operators together. For example, (grumpy cat) OR (#meme has:images) will return either Posts containing the terms grumpy and cat, or Posts with images containing the hashtag #meme. Note that ANDs are applied first, then ORs are applied.

A note on negations

The operators -is:nullcast must always be negated.

Negated operators cannot be used alone.

Do not negate a set of operators grouped together in a set of parentheses. Instead, negate each individual operator. For example, instead of using skiing -(snow OR day OR noschool), we suggest that you use skiing -snow -day -noschool. 

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Order of operations

When combining AND and OR functionality, the following order of operations will dictate how your query is evaluated.

  1. Operators connected by AND logic are combined first
  2. Then, operators connected with OR logic are applied

For example:

  • apple OR iphone ipad would be evaluated as apple OR (iphone ipad)
  • ipad iphone OR android would be evaluated as (iphone ipad) OR android

To eliminate uncertainty and ensure that your query is evaluated as intended, group terms together with parentheses where appropriate. 

For example:

  • (apple OR iphone) ipad
  • iphone (ipad OR android)

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Punctuation, diacritics, and case sensitivity

If you specify a keyword or hashtag query with character accents or diacritics, it will match Post text that contains both the term with the accents and diacritics, as well as those terms with normal characters. For example, queries with a keyword Diacrítica or hashtag #cumpleaños will match Diacrítica or #cumpleaños, as well as with Diacritica or #cumpleanos without the tilde í or eñe.

Characters with accents or diacritics are treated the same as normal characters and are not treated as word boundaries. For example, a query with the keyword cumpleaños would only match activities containing the word cumpleaños and would not match activities containing cumplea, cumplean, or os.

All operators are evaluated in a case-insensitive manner. For example, the query cat will match Posts with all of the following: cat, CAT, Cat.

The filtered stream matching behavior acts differently from Search Posts. When building a filtered stream rule, know that keywords and hashtags that include accents and diacritics will only match on terms that also include the accent and diacritic, and will not match on terms that use normal characters instead. 

For example, filtered stream rules that include a keyword Diacrítica or hashtag #cumpleaños will only match the terms Diacrítica and #cumpleaños, and will not match on Diacritica or #cumpleanos without the tilde í or eñe

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Specificity and efficiency

When you start to build your query, it is important to keep a few things in mind.

  • Using broad, standalone operators for your query such as a single keyword or #hashtag is generally not recommended since it will likely match on a massive volume of Posts. Creating a more robust query will result in a more specific set of matching Posts, and will hopefully reduce the amount of noise in the payload that you will need to sift through to find valuable insights. 
    • For example, if your query was just the keyword happy you will likely get anywhere from 200,000 - 300,000 Posts per day.
    • Adding more conditional operators narrows your search results, for example (happy OR happiness) place_country:GB -birthday -is:retweet
  • Writing efficient queries is also beneficial for staying within the characters query length restriction. The character count includes the entire query string including spaces and operators.
    • For example, the following query is 59 characters long: (happy OR happiness) place_country:GB -birthday -is:retweet

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Quote Tweet matching behavior

When using the Search Posts endpoints, operators will not match on the content from the original Post that was quoted, but will match on the content included in the Quote Tweet.

However, please note that filtered stream will match on both the content from the original P that was quoted and the Quote Tweet’s content.

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Iteratively building a query

Test your query early and often

Getting a query to return the “right” results the first time is rare. There is so much on X that may or may not be obvious at first and the query syntax described above may be hard to match to your desired search. As you build a query, it is important for you to periodically test it out.

For this section, we are going to start with the following query and adjust it based on the results that we receive during our test: 

happy OR happiness

Use results to narrow the query

As you test the query, you should scan the returned Posts to see if they include the data that you are expecting and hoping to receive. Starting with a broad query and a superset of Post matches allows you to review the result and narrow the query to filter out undesired results.  

When we tested the example query, we noticed that we were getting Po in a variety of different languages. In this situation, we want to only receive Posts that are in english, so we’re going to add the lang: operator:

(happy OR happiness) lang:en

The test delivered a number of Posts wishing people a happy birthday, so we are going to add -birthday as a negated keyword operator. We also want to only receive original Posts, so we’ve added the negated -is:retweet operator:

(happy OR happiness) lang:en -birthday -is:retweet

Adjust for inclusion where needed

If you notice that you are not receiving data that you expect and know that there are existing Posts that should return, you may need to broaden your query by removing operators that may be filtering out the desired data. 

For our example, we noticed that there were other Posts in our personal timeline that expressed the emotion that we are looking for and weren’t included in the test results. To ensure we have greater coverage, we are going to add the keywords, excited and elated.

(happy OR happiness OR excited OR elated) lang:en -birthday -is:retweet

Adjust for popular trends/bursts over the time period

Trends come and go on X quickly. Maintaining your query should be an active process. If you plan to use a query for a while, we suggest that you periodically check in on the data that you are receiving to see if you need to make any adjustments.

In our example, we notice that we started to receive some Posts that are wishing people a “happy holidays”. Since we don’t want these Posts included in our results, we are going to add a negated -holidays keyword.

(happy OR happiness OR excited OR elated) lang:en -birthday -is:retweet -holidays

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Adding a query to your request

To add your query to your request, you must use the query parameter. As with any query parameters, you must make sure to HTTP encode the query that you developed.

Here is an example of what this might look like using a cURL command, with an additional tweet.fields and max_results parameter included. If you would like to use this command, please make sure to replace $BEARER_TOKEN with your own Bearer Token:

curl https://api.x.com/2/tweets/search/recent?query=cat%20has%3Amedia%20-grumpy&tweet.fields=created_at&max_results=100 -H "Authorization: Bearer $BEARER_TOKEN"

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Query examples

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Tracking a natural disaster

The following query matched on original Posts coming from weather agencies and gauges that discuss Hurricane Harvey, which hit Houston in 2017.

Here is what the query would look like without the HTTP encoding:

has:geo (from:NWSNHC OR from:NHC\_Atlantic OR from:NWSHouston OR from:NWSSanAntonio OR from:USGS\_TexasRain OR from:USGS_TexasFlood OR from:JeffLindner1) -is:retweet

And here is what the query would look like with the HTTP encoding, the query parameter, and the recent search URI:

https://api.x.com/2/tweets/search/recent?query=-is%3Aretweet%20has%3Ageo%20(from%3ANWSNHC%20OR%20from%3ANHC\_Atlantic%20OR%20from%3ANWSHouston%20OR%20from%3ANWSSanAntonio%20OR%20from%3AUSGS\_TexasRain%20OR%20from%3AUSGS_TexasFlood%20OR%20from%3AJeffLindner1)

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Reviewing the sentiment of a conversation

The next rule could be used to better understand the sentiment of the conversation developing around the hashtag, #nowplaying, but scoped to just Posts published within North America.

Here is what the two different queries, one for positive and one for negative, would look like without the HTTP encoding:

#nowplaying (happy OR exciting OR excited OR favorite OR fav OR amazing OR lovely OR incredible) (place\_country:US OR place\_country:MX OR place_country:CA) -horrible -worst -sucks -bad -disappointing

#nowplaying (horrible OR worst OR sucks OR bad OR disappointing) (place\_country:US OR place\_country:MX OR place_country:CA) -happy -exciting -excited -favorite -fav -amazing -lovely -incredible

And here is what the query would look like with the HTTP encoding, the query parameter, and the recent search URI:

https://api.x.com/2/tweets/search/recent?query=%23nowplaying%20(happy%20OR%20exciting%20OR%20excited%20OR%20favorite%20OR%20fav%20OR%20amazing%20OR%20lovely%20OR%20incredible)%20(place\_country%3AUS%20OR%20place\_country%3AMX%20OR%20place_country%3ACA)%20-horrible%20-worst%20-sucks%20-bad%20-disappointing

https://api.x.com/2/tweets/search/recent?query=%23nowplaying%20(horrible%20OR%20worst%20OR%20sucks%20OR%20bad%20OR%20disappointing)%20(place\_country%3AUS%20OR%20place\_country%3AMX%20OR%20place_country%3ACA)%20-happy%20-exciting%20-excited%20-favorite%20-fav%20-amazing%20-lovely%20-incredible

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Find Posts that relate to a specific Post annotation

This rule was built to search for original Posts that included an image of a pet that is not a cat, where the language identified in the Post is Japanese. To do this, we used the context: operator to take advantage of the Post annotation functionality. We first used the Post lookup endpoint and the tweet.fields=context_annotations fields parameter to identify which domain.entity IDs we need to use in our query:

  • Posts that relate to cats return domain 66 (Interests and Hobbies category) with entity 852262932607926273 (Cats). 
  • Posts that relate to pets return domain 65 (Interests and Hobbies Vertical) with entity 852262932607926273 (Pets). 

Here is what the query would look like without the HTTP encoding:

context:65.852262932607926273 -context:66.852262932607926273 -is:retweet has:images lang:ja

And here is what the query would look like with the HTTP encoding, the query parameter, and the recent search URI:

https://api.x.com/2/tweets/search/recent?query=context%3A65.852262932607926273%20-context%3A66.852262932607926273%20-is%3Aretweet%20has%3Aimages%20lang%3Aja

Try out the query builder tool for additional support. 

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Operators

Note: For some operators, an alternate name, or alias, is available.
OperatorTypeDescription
keywordStandaloneMatches a keyword within the body of a Post. This is a tokenized match, meaning that your keyword string will be matched against the tokenized text of the Post body. Tokenization splits words based on punctuation, symbols, and Unicode basic plane separator characters.

For example, a Post with the text “I like coca-cola” would be split into the following tokens: I, like, coca, cola. These tokens would then be compared to the keyword string used in your query. To match strings containing punctuation (for example coca-cola), symbol, or separator characters, you must wrap your keyword in double-quotes.

Example: pepsi OR cola OR "coca cola"
emojiStandaloneMatches an emoji within the body of a Post. Similar to a keyword, emojis are a tokenized match, meaning that your emoji will be matched against the tokenized text of the Post body.

Note that if an emoji has a variant, you must wrap it in double quotes to add to a query.

Example: (😃 OR 😡) 😬
"exact phrase match"StandaloneMatches the exact phrase within the body of a Post.

Example: ("X API" OR #v2) -"recent search"
#StandaloneMatches any Post containing a recognized hashtag, if the hashtag is a recognized entity in a Post.

This operator performs an exact match, NOT a tokenized match, meaning the rule #thanku will match posts with the exact hashtag #thanku, but not those with the hashtag #thankunext.

Example: #thankunext #fanart OR @arianagrande
@StandaloneMatches any Post that mentions the given username, if the username is a recognized entity (including the @ character).

Example: (@XDevelopers OR @API) -@X
$StandaloneMatches any Post that contains the specified ‘cashtag’ (where the leading character of the token is the $ character).

Note that the cashtag operator relies on X’s ‘symbols’ entity extraction to match cashtags, rather than trying to extract the cashtag from the body itself.

Example: $twtr OR @XDevelopers -$fb
from:StandaloneMatches any Post from a specific user.
The value can be either the username (excluding the @ character) or the user’s numeric user ID.

You can only pass a single username/ID per from: operator.

Example: from:XDevelopers OR from:API -from:X
to:StandaloneMatches any Post that is in reply to a particular user.
The value can be either the username (excluding the @ character) or the user’s numeric user ID.

You can only pass a single username/ID per to: operator.

Example: to:XDevelopers OR to:API -to:X
url:StandalonePerforms a tokenized match on any validly-formatted URL of a Post.

This operator matches on the contents of both the url or expanded_url fields. For example, a Post containing “You should check out X Developer Labs: https://t.co/c0A36SWil4” (with the short URL redirecting to https://developer.twitter.com) will match both the following rules:

from:XDevelopers url:"https://developer.twitter.com" (because it will match the contents of entities.urls.expanded_url)

from:XDevelopers url:"https://t.co" (because it will match the contents of entities.urls.url)

Tokens and phrases containing punctuation or special characters should be double-quoted (for example, url:"/developer"). Similarly, to match on a specific protocol, enclose in double-quotes (for example, url:"https://developer.twitter.com").
retweets_of:StandaloneMatches Posts that are Retweets of the specified user. The value can be either the username (excluding the @ character) or the user’s numeric user ID.

You can only pass a single username/ID per retweets_of: operator.

Example: retweets_of:twitterdev OR retweets_of:twitterapi
in_reply_to_tweet_id:StandaloneAvailable alias: in_reply_to_status_id:
Matches on replies to the specified Post.

Example: in_reply_to_tweet_id:1539382664746020864
retweets_of_tweet_id:StandaloneAvailable alias: retweets_of_status_id:
Matches on explicit (or native) Retweets of the specified Post. Note that the Post ID used should be the ID of an original Post and not a Retweet.

Example: retweets_of_tweet_id:1539382664746020864
quotes_of_tweet_id:StandaloneAvailable alias: quotes_of_status_id:
Matches on Quote Tweets of the specified Post. Note that the Post ID used should be the ID of an original Post and not a Quote Tweet.

Example: quotes_of_tweet_id:1539382664746020864
context:StandaloneMatches Posts with a specific domain id/entity id pair. To learn more about this operator, please visit our page on annotations.

You can only pass a single domain/entity per context: operator.

context:domain_id.entity_id

However, you can combine multiple domain/entities using the OR operator:

(context:47.1139229372198469633 OR context:11.1088514520308342784)

Examples:
context:10.799022225751871488 (domain_id.entity_id returns Posts matching that specific domain-entity pair)
entity:StandaloneMatches Posts with a specific entity string value. To learn more about this operator, please visit our page on annotations.
Please note that this is only available with recent search.

You can only pass a single entity: operator.

entity:"string declaration of entity/place"

Examples: entity:"Michael Jordan" OR entity:"Barcelona"
conversation_id:StandaloneMatches Posts that share a common conversation ID. A conversation ID is set to the Post ID of a Post that started a conversation. As Replies to a Post are posted, even Replies to Replies, the conversation_id is added to its JSON payload.

You can only pass a single conversation ID per conversation_id: operator.

Example: conversation_id:1334987486343299072 (from:XDevelopers OR from:api)
list:StandaloneNEW Matches Posts posted by users who are members of a specified list.

For example, if @XDevelopers and @api were members of List 123, and you included list:123 in your query, your response will only contain Posts that have been published by those accounts. You can find List IDs by using the List lookup endpoint.

Please note that you can only use a single list: operator per query, and you can only specify a single List per list: operator.

Example: list:123
place:StandaloneMatches Posts tagged with the specified location or X place ID. Multi-word place names (“New York City”, “Palo Alto”) should be enclosed in quotes.

You can only pass a single place per place: operator.

Note: See the GET geo/search standard v1.1 endpoint for how to obtain X place IDs.

Note: This operator will not match on Retweets, since Retweet’s places are attached to the original Post. It will also not match on places attached to the original Post of a Quote Tweet.

Example: place:"new york city" OR place:seattle OR place:fd70c22040963ac7
place_country:StandaloneMatches Posts where the country code associated with a tagged place/location matches the given ISO alpha-2 character code.

You can find a list of valid ISO codes on Wikipedia.

You can only pass a single ISO code per place_country: operator.

Note: This operator will not match on Retweets, since Retweet’s places are attached to the original Post. It will also not match on places attached to the original Post of a Quote Tweet.

Example: place_country:US OR place_country:MX OR place_country:CA
point_radius:StandaloneMatches against the place.geo.coordinates object of the Post when present, and in X, against a place geo polygon, where the Place polygon is fully contained within the defined region.

point_radius:[longitude latitude radius]

- Units of radius supported are miles (mi) and kilometers (km)
- Radius must be less than 25mi
- Longitude is in the range of ±180
- Latitude is in the range of ±90
- All coordinates are in decimal degrees
- Rule arguments are contained within brackets, space delimited

You can only pass a single geo polygon per point_radius: operator.

Note: This operator will not match on Retweets, since Retweet’s places are attached to the original Post. It will also not match on places attached to the original Post of a Quote Tweet.

Example: point_radius:[2.355128 48.861118 16km] OR point_radius:[-41.287336 174.761070 20mi]
bounding_box:StandaloneAvailable alias: geo_bounding_box:
Matches against the place.geo.coordinates object of the Post when present, and in X, against a place geo polygon, where the place polygon is fully contained within the defined region.

bounding_box:[west_long south_lat east_long north_lat]

- west_long south_lat represent the southwest corner of the bounding box where west_long is the longitude of that point, and south_lat is the latitude.
- east_long north_lat represent the northeast corner of the bounding box, where east_long is the longitude of that point, and north_lat is the latitude.
- Width and height of the bounding box must be less than 25mi
- Longitude is in the range of ±180
- Latitude is in the range of ±90
- All coordinates are in decimal degrees.
- Rule arguments are contained within brackets, space delimited.

You can only pass a single geo polygons per bounding_box: operator.

Note: This operator will not match on Retweets, since Retweet’s places are attached to the original Post. It will also not match on places attached to the original Post of a Quote Tweet.

Example: bounding_box:[-105.301758 39.964069 -105.178505 40.09455]
is:retweetConjunction requiredMatches on Retweets that match the rest of the specified rule. This operator looks only for true Retweets (for example, those generated using the Retweet button). Quote Tweets will not be matched by this operator.

Example: data @XDevelopers -is:retweet
is:replyConjunction requiredDeliver only explicit replies that match a rule. Can also be negated to exclude replies that match a query from delivery.

Note: This operator is also available with the filtered stream endpoint. When used with filtered stream, this operator matches on replies to an original Post, replies in quoted Tweets, and replies in Retweets.

Example: from:XDevelopers is:reply
is:quoteConjunction requiredReturns all Quote Tweets, also known as Posts with comments.

Example: "sentiment analysis" is:quote
is:verifiedConjunction requiredDeliver only Posts whose authors are verified by X.

Example: #nowplaying is:verified
-is:nullcastConjunction requiredRemoves Posts created for promotion only on ads.twitter.com that have a "source":"Twitter for Advertisers (legacy)" or "source":"Twitter for Advertisers".
This operator must be negated.

For more info on Nullcasted Posts, see our page on Post availability.

Example: "mobile games" -is:nullcast
has:hashtagsConjunction requiredMatches Posts that contain at least one hashtag.

Example: from:XDevelopers -has:hashtags
has:cashtagsConjunction requiredMatches Posts that contain a cashtag symbol (with a leading ‘’character.Forexample,‘’ character. For example, `tag).<br/><br/>Example: #stonks has:cashtags`
has:linksConjunction requiredThis operator matches Posts which contain links and media in the Post body.

Example: from:XDevelopers announcement has:links
has:mentionsConjunction requiredMatches Posts that mention another X user.

Example: #nowplaying has:mentions
has:mediaConjunction requiredAvailable alias: has:media_link
Matches Posts that contain a media object, such as a photo, GIF, or video, as determined by X. This will not match on media created with Periscope, or Posts with links to other media hosting sites.

Example: (kittens OR puppies) has:media
has:imagesConjunction requiredMatches Posts that contain a recognized URL to an image.

Example: #meme has:images
has:video_linkConjunction requiredAvailable alias: has:videos
Matches Posts that contain native X videos, uploaded directly to X. This will not match on videos created with Periscope, or Posts with links to other video hosting sites.

Example: #icebucketchallenge has:video_link
has:geoConjunction requiredMatches Posts that have Post-specific geolocation data provided by the X user. This can be either a location in the form of a X place, with the corresponding display name, geo polygon, and other fields, or in rare cases, a geo lat-long coordinate.

Note: Operators matching on place (Post geo) will only include matches from original Posts. Retweets do not contain any place data.

Example: recommend #paris has:geo -bakery
lang:Conjunction requiredMatches Posts that have been classified by X as being of a particular language (if, and only if, the Post has been classified). It is important to note that each Post is currently only classified as being of one language, so AND’ing together multiple languages will yield no results.

You can only pass a single BCP 47 language identifier per lang: operator.

Note: if no language classification can be made the provided result is ‘und’ (for undefined).

Example: recommend #paris lang:en

The list below represents the currently supported languages and their corresponding BCP 47 language identifier:

Amharic: am | German: de | Malayalam: ml | Slovak: sk
Arabic: ar | Greek: el | Maldivian: dv | Slovenian: sl
Armenian: hy | Gujarati: gu | Marathi: mr | Sorani Kurdish: ckb
Basque: eu | Haitian Creole: ht | Nepali: ne | Spanish: es
Bengali: bn | Hebrew: iw | Norwegian: no | Swedish: sv
Bosnian: bs | Hindi: hi | Oriya: or | Tagalog: tl
Bulgarian: bg | Latinized Hindi: hi-Latn | Panjabi: pa | Tamil: ta
Burmese: my | Hungarian: hu | Pashto: ps | Telugu: te
Croatian: hr | Icelandic: is | Persian: fa | Thai: th
Catalan: ca | Indonesian: in | Polish: pl | Tibetan: bo
Czech: cs | Italian: it | Portuguese: pt | Traditional Chinese: zh-TW
Danish: da | Japanese: ja | Romanian: ro | Turkish: tr
Dutch: nl | Kannada: kn | Russian: ru | Ukrainian: uk
English: en | Khmer: km | Serbian: sr | Urdu: ur
Estonian: et | Korean: ko | Simplified Chinese: zh-CN | Uyghur: ug
Finnish: fi | Lao: lo | Sindhi: sd | Vietnamese: vi
French: fr | Latvian: lv | Sinhala: si | Welsh: cy
Georgian: ka | Lithuanian: lt