[Tex/LaTex] Use Latin language with babel

babellanguages

I'd like to typeset some parts of the text in Latin language (preferably New Latin, if possible). Latin language is listed among supported languages of Babel. I invoke it as \usepackage[main=british, french, german, latin]{babel} and use in the text like \begin{otherlanguage}{latin}TEXT\end{otherlanguage}, but XeLaTeX keeps telling me Language 'latin' not supported'. This works well for the other languages I use. How can I use Latin language?

As comments suggest, the warning can be produced

\usepackage[
backend=biber,
bibstyle=authoryear,
citestyle=authoryear-comp,
sorting=ynt,
autocite=inline,
maxbibnames=99,
mincitenames=1,
maxcitenames=2,
hyperref=true,
backref=true,
backrefstyle=none,
useprefix=true,
uniquelist=false
]{biblatex}
\DeclareFieldFormat[article]{title}{\mkbibbold{#1}}
\preto\fullcite{\AtNextCite{\defcounter{maxnames}{99}}}

I have some bibliographic entries written in Latin, but the bibliography is typeset in English.

I use texlive 2018.151 on openSUSE Linux. All Latin related packages (well, I have all packages installed) are installed.

Best Answer

\documentclass[british]{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[main=british, french, german, latin]{babel}
\usepackage{csquotes}

\usepackage[style=authoryear, backend=biber]{biblatex}

\addbibresource{biblatex-examples.bib}

\begin{document}
Lorem
\end{document}

produces the warning

Package biblatex Warning: Language 'latin' not supported.
(biblatex)                Using fallback language 'british' on input line 11.

Your editor may digest that message for you and may only display the 'important' Language 'latin' not supported. bit of that message prominently to you robbing you of the chance to see that it comes from biblatex.

Due to the way language loading works in biblatex, all declared document languages are loaded at the beginning of the document even if they are not used at all. Languages that are not supported yield a warning. Since there is no latin.lbx Latin is not supported by biblatex (if you want to contribute a .lbx file for an unsupported language or know someone who can, drop by at https://github.com/plk/biblatex/issues). If you do not plan to typeset citations or the bibliography in an unsupported language you safely can ignore that message.

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] babel with russian and english language

The problem is in the english option in \documentclass. Let's see what happens:

english is a global option, so that it's passed to every package
the list of local options to babel is russian, ukrainian, english.

So babel gets first the global option english and loads the language file english.ldf; then it loads russian.ldf and ukrainian.ldf but does nothing with english, because it has already read that option.

Consequence: the last loaded language is Ukrainian.

Remedies: don't put language options in \documentclass if you plan to load babel with multiple languages, or specify all languages, in the desired order, as options to \documentclass.

[Tex/LaTex] Change Language in \usepackage[]{babel}

This is a very common error with babel, and is solved by removing the .aux file whenever you change languages.

When you use babel it writes information to the .aux file that refer specifically to the language you have chosen. In your case, for example, when you select swedish as the babel language it does two things: (i) it loads a set of macros related to Swedish and (ii) it (minimally) writes the following to the .aux file.

\select@language{swedish}
\@writefile{toc}{\select@language{swedish}}
\@writefile{lof}{\select@language{swedish}}
\@writefile{lot}{\select@language{swedish}}

The command \select@language{swedish} tells TeX to use the specific macros defined for Swedish.

The .aux file is used for storing information that will be reused on the next compilation. See

What are the situations where you have to compile a document more than once?

for some more information on this.

babel writes to the .aux file because it changes the names of things like the table of contents and list of figures according to the chosen language.

Now, when you change the language without deleting the .aux file, and compile your file, TeX reads in the .aux file and encounters the \select@language command. But since you have changed the language, the macros for Swedish haven't been loaded, and you get the error you received.

The babel package is not the only package that can sometimes require you to delete the .aux file. See the following more general question for information about them:

Will cruft from a previous compile ever change the final look of my document

Newer versions of `babel`

If you are using an up-to-date system with babel version 3.22 or greater, you should no longer receive this error, but instead should see a warning like the following:

Package babel Warning: Unknown language `swedish'. Very likely you
(babel)                requested it in a previous run. Expect some
(babel)                wrong results in this run, which should vanish
(babel)                in the next one. Reported on input line xxx.

Best Answer

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[Tex/LaTex] babel with russian and english language

[Tex/LaTex] Change Language in \usepackage[]{babel}

Newer versions of babel

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Newer versions of `babel`