I'm not sure how other languages do it, but it appears there's a way that vscode-language-dhall needs to register for supporting dhall code in markdown fenced code blocks: https://github.com/mjbvz/vscode-fenced-code-block-grammar-injection-example
As an example I'd like to have syntax highlighting in the following code block ( \ used to escape backticks):
\```dhall
let Monoid
: ∀(m : Type) → Type
= λ(m : Type) → List m → m
in Monoid
\```
Right now there's no syntax highlighting in fenced code blocks.