Page 57 - HTML5

Chapter 8: Content Languages

Syntax

• <element lang="language_code"> <!-- Language code has to be in the format [ISO 639-1](
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_639-1 ) -->

Remarks

The value of the lang attribute must be a valid BCP 47 language tag or the empty string (if the
language is unknown).

The BCP 47 language tags are listed in the IANA Language Subtag Registry.

Accessibility

The relevant WCAG 2.0 Success Criteria are:

• 3.1.1 Language of Page
• 3.1.2 Language of Parts

The related WCAG 2.0 Techniques are:

• H57: Using language attributes on the html element
• H58: Using language attributes to identify changes in the human language

Examples

Element Language

The lang attribute is used to specify the language of element content and attribute text values:

<p lang="en">The content of this element is in English.</p>

<p lang="en" title="The value of this attribute is also in English.">The content of this
element is in English.</p>

The language declaration gets inherited:

<div lang="en">
<p>This element contains English content.</p>
<p title="This attribute, too.">Same with this element.</p>
</div>

Elements with Multiple Languages

https://riptutorial.com/ 41