The xml:lang Attribute

The xml:lang attribute is a special language identification attribute in XML that identifies the natural or formal language in which the content of the XML document is written.

Example

<message xmlns="http://simonstl.com/ns/examples/message"
         xml:lang="en" date="20051006" >

Description

The value en (English) is a language identifier defined by RFC 3066 and ISO 639. Other examples include two-letter language identifiers, such as de (German), fr (French), and es (Spanish); two-letter identifiers with country identification subtags, such as fr-CA (French used in Canada); and three-letter language identifiers, such as eng (English), ger or deu (German), fre or fra (French), and spa (Spanish).

See also

§2.12

RFC 3066: http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3066.txt

ISO 639: search at http://www.iso.ch for the latest information

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