A printer has a printing mechanism for printing on roll paper; RAM storing font data for multiple languages having at least some character codes in common, and the starting address of the font data for each of the multiple languages; a communicator that receives a command specifying starting addresses and character codes; and a controller that reads font data corresponding to the character codes received by the communicator from RAM based on the starting address specified by the command, and controlling the printing mechanism to print based on the read font data.