Mod_Rewrite Complications - php

Question

I have recently been doing a lot of redesign on my website, and one of these changes is SEO URL's, and I am doing Mod_Rewrite to do this. The problem is that I am not exactly familiar with reg expressions at all, nor am I exactly the best in the world when it comes to working with the .htaccess file.. Now, the problem I am having is that I have several variables on the same level and the RewriteRules I am using are cancelling each other out. I did find a work around by adding is tag, name, and page into the rewritten url, but that is not what I want. I would like the urls to be structured so it is /$lg/articles/[$tag|$name|$page]/ Again,doing is the way I want causes them to conflict because the document doesn't seem to know to read and process off three at the same time. Any tips and suggestions on how to do this? I would greatly appreciate it. :D
RewriteRule ^([^/]*)/articles/tag/([^/]*)$ /articles.php?lg=$1&tag=$2
RewriteRule ^([^/]*)/articles/name/([a-zA-Z]+)$ /articles.php?lg=$1&name=$2
RewriteRule ^([^/]*)/articles/page/([0-9]+)$ /articles.php?lg=$1&page=$2
What I am wanting it so have the URL's structure like so : /language/articles/Variable Value. Say an integer is put in, I want the url to look like so: /en/articles/1 and it will then act as the page number for the pagination system. Or an article name is put in: /en/articles/random_article_name and that name is then used to all the specific article in a database. The same idea applies for the tags, but pulls all articles with that tag. The idea is to have the URLs short and clean. The problem is that if I do the code like so:
RewriteRule ^([^/]*)/articles/([^/]*)$ /articles.php?lg=$1&tag=$2
RewriteRule ^([^/]*)/articles/([a-zA-Z]+)$ /articles.php?lg=$1&name=$2
RewriteRule ^([^/]*)/articles//([0-9]+)$ /articles.php?lg=$1&page=$2
Only one of the $_GET values will be read, and the rest will be ignored regardless of the variable name or regex expression. I am looking for a way to format my urls like so, if possible. If it isn't, I understand. I just figured it doesn't hurt to ask those who are more experienced.

Answer 1

You can have your rules like this:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d [OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -f
RewriteRule ^ - [L]
RewriteRule ^([^/]*)/articles/([0-9]+)/?$ /articles.php?lg=$1&page=$2 [L,QSA]
RewriteRule ^([^/]*)/articles/([a-zA-Z]+)/?$ /articles.php?lg=$1&name=$2 [L,QSA]

Answer 2

I'm not sure what's not working as your rules seem good to me. You can try this one to group the 3 rules :
RewriteRule ^([^/]*)/articles/(page|name|tag)/([0-9]+)$ articles.php?lg=$1&$2=$3