\(Legacy\) Language support for NLU services

---
title: \(Legacy\) Language support for NLU services
description: Entity extraction is supported on ServiceNow NLU models for specific languages only. The remaining languages support intent matching only. If you are using IBM Watson Assistant, supported languages vary.
locale: en-US
canonical_url: https://www.servicenow.com/docs/r/australia/conversational-interfaces/language-support-nlu-services.html
release: australia
topic_type: reference
last_updated: "2026-09-10"
reading_time_minutes: 2
breadcrumb: [Localizing NLU conversations, Localization options for NLU conversations, Build and deploy NLU conversations, \(Legacy\) Virtual Agent for NLU, Conversational Interfaces]
---

# \(Legacy\) Language support for NLU services

Entity extraction is supported on ServiceNow® NLU models for specific languages only. The remaining languages support intent matching only. If you are using IBM Watson Assistant, supported languages vary.

You can see the list of currently supported languages in the Open NLU Driver Languages \[open\_nlu\_driver\_language\] table.

The VA NLU Languages \[sys\_cs\_nlu\_language\] table lists the languages that are currently enabled in Virtual Agent.

**Note:** If you choose a language that doesn't support full entity extraction, an error message appears.

For unsupported language codes, you can specify a fallback language for NLU prediction. For example, if a user's language detected language is Mexican Spanish \(es-mx\), you can specify Spanish \(es\) as the fallback language, if it is enabled on your instance. For more information, see [\(Legacy\) Specify a fallback language for locale-specific languages and NLU prediction](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ServiceNow/ServiceNowDocs/australia/markdown/australia/conversational-interfaces/specify-fallback-language-nlu-prediction.md). You can also enable Dynamic Translation for Virtual Agent. For details, see [Language detection and dynamic machine translation in Virtual Agent in enhanced chat](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ServiceNow/ServiceNowDocs/australia/markdown/australia/conversational-interfaces/virtual-agent/dynamic-lang-detection-translation-enhanced-chat.md).

**Note:** This content focuses specifically on NLU language support. For more information on LLM language support for Now Assist in Virtual Agent, see [Multilingual service for Now Assist](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ServiceNow/ServiceNowDocs/australia/markdown/intelligent-experiences/translation-for-now-assist.md).

<table id="table_tkk_ymg_fpb"><thead><tr><th>

Service

</th><th>

Supported languages

</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>

ServiceNow NLU

</td><td>

For intent matching and entity recognition:-   English
-   French
-   German
-   Japanese
-   Spanish

 For intent matching only:

 -   English
-   Chinese \(Simplified\)
-   Danish
-   Dutch
-   Finnish
-   French
-   French \(Canadian\)
-   German
-   Italian
-   Japanese
-   Korean
-   Norwegian
-   Polish
-   Portuguese \(Brazilian\)
-   Spanish
-   Swedish

</td></tr><tr><td>

IBM Watson Assistant

</td><td>

-   English
-   Chinese \(Simplified\)
-   Dutch
-   French
-   German
-   Italian
-   Japanese
-   Korean
-   Portuguese
-   Spanish

</td></tr><tr><td>

Google Dialogflow ES

</td><td>

-   English
-   Chinese \(Simplified\)
-   Chinese \(Traditional\)
-   Dutch
-   Finnish
-   French
-   French \(Canadian\)
-   German
-   Italian
-   Japanese
-   Korean
-   Norwegian
-   Polish
-   Portuguese
-   Portuguese \(Brazilian\)
-   Russian
-   Spanish
-   Swedish
-   Thai
-   Turkish

</td></tr></tbody>
</table>**Parent Topic:**[\(Legacy\) Localizing Virtual Agent NLU conversations](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ServiceNow/ServiceNowDocs/australia/markdown/australia/conversational-interfaces/localize-va-topic.md)