# Return Documents in a Specific Language

When you send a query action to the IDOL Content component, by default it returns results that use the same language and encoding as the query text. This language type can be:

- the language and encoding specified in the `LanguageType` parameter sent with the query.

- the language type specified in the `DefaultLanguageType` configuration parameter if the query does not include a `LanguageType` parameter.

To return documents in one more specific languages for the query, you can set the `MatchLanguage` parameter to a list of the languages that you want to match. When you set this parameter, Content applies the stemming algorithm and stop word list that is appropriate for the query language type as usual (it does not translate the query). The results include only documents in the specified languages that match the stopped and stemmed terms in the original query (that is, the words in result documents must stem to the same root as the words in the query text).

For example:

    action=Query&Text=Birmingham&LanguageType=EnglishUTF8&MatchLanguage=Dutch+German

In this example Content stems the query term Birmingham according to the stemming rules for the `EnglishUTF8` language type. It returns any documents in Dutch or German that contain a term that has the same stem as the English stem of Birmingham.

NOTE: If you specify `MatchLanguage`, you cannot specify `MatchLanguageType` or `MatchEncoding` in your query.

To return documents that match the query terms, regardless of the document language, you can add the `AnyLanguage` parameter to your query. See Return Documents in Multiple Languages.

TIP: You can use the Languages tab in the Status page of the IDOL Admin interface to search for all documents in a particular language. You can also modify that query in IDOL Admin. For more information, refer to the IDOL Admin User Guide.

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