What it does
Message languages is the shop-wide starting point for the text a blocked shopper reads. It lists every language your Shopify store publishes and holds one set of default messages per language, covering the Quantity, Value and Weight limit types.
Every rule you create starts from these defaults. A rule can then override its own wording, for one language or all of them, without touching what any other rule inherits.
A status badge next to each language tells you where it stands: complete, missing some of the messages, or not started at all.
Fill in a language
Open Settings > Message languages. The table lists your published languages.
Choose Edit or Translate. Your primary language opens with Edit, and every other published language opens with Translate.
Write the minimum and maximum text for the Quantity, Value and Weight limit types. You do not have to use all three; write the ones your rules actually use.
Save. Settings shares one save bar across the page.
For the field-by-field walkthrough, including exactly how a per-rule override interacts with these shop-level defaults, see Setting default message templates.
Keep the merge fields
The default text contains merge fields that fill themselves in from the rule that did the blocking, such as the limit itself and the cart total. They are what keeps a message honest when you later change a rule from 6 to 12.
Replacing a merge field with a typed number is the most common way a message goes stale: the rule changes, the message does not, and the shopper is told the wrong number in fluent French.
Common mistakes
- Leaving a published language blank. A blank language is not a hidden language. Shoppers browsing in it still get blocked, and still get a message, just in your store's default language.
- Deleting a merge field. Only do it if you are replacing it with something that will never change.
- Confusing it with account language. This is the customer-facing setting. Account language only changes your own admin panel.
- Editing one rule when you meant to edit all of them. A change made inside a rule stays inside that rule. Change the wording here to reach every rule that has not been customised away from the default.