Editions & Languages

There are two independent language axes in Wiktapi. Knowing the difference matters.

Editions

An edition is the Wiktionary source you're querying, identified by its language code (en, fr, de, ...). It's the first segment of every URL:

/v1/{edition}/word/{word}

The edition controls two things:

1. Which dictionary is queried: en is English Wiktionary, de is German Wiktionary, etc.
2. The language definitions are written in: the en edition writes glosses in English, de in German.

To see which editions are available:

curl https://api.wiktapi.dev/v1/editions
# { "editions": ["de", "en", "fr"] }

Word language (?lang=)

The ?lang= parameter filters entries to a specific word language: the language the word itself belongs to.

This is independent of the edition. Both en and fr editions contain entries for German words; they just define them in English or French respectively.

# German word "Haus", English definitions
GET /v1/en/word/Haus?lang=de

# German word "Haus", French definitions
GET /v1/fr/word/Haus?lang=de

Without ?lang=, you get every language that has a word with that spelling:

# French "chat", English "chat", and any other language that spells it the same way
GET /v1/en/word/chat

Summary

	Edition	?lang=
Controls	Which Wiktionary source	Which word language to filter to
Affects	Definition language	Entries returned
Required	Yes (URL path)	No
Example	en, fr, de	de, ja, zh

To see all word languages in a given instance:

curl https://api.wiktapi.dev/v1/languages

Returns each language code, its full name, and entry count.