CSS font-language-override

The font-language-override property allows you to control the use of language-specific glyph substitutions and positioning.

The font-language-override property is one of the properties introduced in CSS3 for enabling various font related features that can improve the appearance of the text on the page. The font-language-override property deals specifically with language-specific glyph substitutions and positioning. It allows you to override the language system used by the content language.

This property can be useful in certain cases because, many languages share a common script, but the shape of certain letters can vary across those languages, depending on their context. For example, in Latin text, many fonts render "fi" with an explicit fi-ligature that joins the two glphs into one, and removes the dot from the "i" (example. However, in languages such as Turkish a dotted-i has a different meaning to a dotless-i. So generating such a ligature is not a good option in this case. Therefore, you would either want to use a specialized ligature that maintains the dot over the "i", or avoid the ligature altogether.


The syntax of the font-language-override property is:

Possible Values

Specifies that when rendering with OpenType fonts, the content language of the element is used to infer the OpenType language system.
This value is a single three-letter case-sensitive OpenType language system tag that specifies the OpenType language system to be used instead of the language system implied by the language of the element.


Represents the value specified as the property's initial value.
Represents the computed value of the property on the element's parent.

General Information

Initial Value
Applies To
All elements

Example Code

An HTML document might use the following code to indicate that the language is Macedonian:

However, the font might not support the typographic conventions of this language. Therefore, you could use the font-language-override property to specify a language that the font does support.

So if the font supports Serbian for example, you could do this in your CSS:

Official Specifications

Vendor Prefixes




