ISO Language Codes

The lang core attribute is used to define the base language to be used for displaying text and characters on a Web site. This allows an internationalization of HTML for a very large number of languages.

The languages are designated by a two letter code, such as "en" for English or "el" for Greek. One or more hyphenated values can be tacked on to the initial two letter code to specify regional or ethnic variations, such as "en-us" for U.S. English.

Note that html texts that contain foreign languages that use special characters will have to be saved as a Unicode file, rather than as an ANSI file, in order for the characters to be properly displayed. Please be aware that some browsers may not be capable of correctly displaying a Unicode file.

ISO 639: Two-letter Language Codes
Sorted by Language		Sorted by Language Code
Abkhazian	AB	AA	Afar
Afar	AA	AB	Abkhazian
Afrikaans	AF	AF	Afrikaans
Albanian	SQ	AM	Amharic
Amharic	AM	AR	Arabic
Arabic	AR	AS	Assamese
Armenian	HY	AY	Aymara
Assamese	AS	AZ	Azerbaijani
Aymara	AY	BA	Bashkir
Azerbaijani	AZ	BE	Byelorussian
Bashkir	BA	BG	Bulgarian
Basque	EU	BH	Bihari
Bengali, Bangla	BN	BI	Bislama
Bhutani	DZ	BN	Bengali, Bangla
Bihari	BH	BO	Tibetan
Bislama	BI	BR	Breton
Breton	BR	CA	Catalan
Bulgarian	BG	CO	Corsican
Burmese	MY	CS	Czech
Byelorussian	BE	CY	Welsh
Cambodian	KM	DA	Danish
Catalan	CA	DE	German
Chinese	ZH	DZ	Bhutani
Corsican	CO	EL	Greek
Croatian	HR	EN	English, American
Czech	CS	EO	Esperanto
Danish	DA	ES	Spanish
Dutch	NL	ET	Estonian
English, American	EN	EU	Basque
Esperanto	EO	FA	Persian
Estonian	ET	FI	Finnish
Faeroese	FO	FJ	Fiji
Fiji	FJ	FO	Faeroese
Finnish	FI	FR	French
French	FR	FY	Frisian
Frisian	FY	GA	Irish
Gaelic (Scots Gaelic)	GD	GD	Gaelic ("Scots Gaelic")
Galician	GL	GL	Galician
Georgian	KA	GN	Guarani
German	DE	GU	Gujarati
Greek	EL	HA	Hausa
Greenlandic	KL	HI	Hindi
Guarani	GN	HR	Croatian
Gujarati	GU	HU	Hungarian
Hausa	HA	HY	Armenian
Hebrew	IW	IA	Interlingua
Hindi	HI	IE	Interlingue
Hungarian	HU	IK	Inupiak
Icelandic	IS	IN	Indonesian
Indonesian	IN	IS	Icelandic
Interlingua	IA	IT	Italian
Interlingue	IE	IW	Hebrew
Inupiak	IK	JA	Japanese
Irish	GA	JI	Yiddish
Italian	IT	JW	Javanese
Japanese	JA	KA	Georgian
Javanese	JW	KK	Kazakh
Kannada	KN	KL	Greenlandic
Kashmiri	KS	KM	Cambodian
Kazakh	KK	KN	Kannada
Kinyarwanda	RW	KO	Korean
Kirghiz	KY	KS	Kashmiri
Kirundi	RN	KU	Kurdish
Korean	KO	KY	Kirghiz
Kurdish	KU	LA	Latin
Laothian	LO	LN	Lingala
Latin	LA	LO	Laothian
Latvian, Lettish	LV	LT	Lithuanian
Lingala	LN	LV	Latvian, Lettish
Lithuanian	LT	MG	Malagasy
Macedonian	MK	MI	Maori
Malagasy	MG	MK	Macedonian
Malay	MS	ML	Malayalam
Malayalam	ML	MN	Mongolian
Maltese	MT	MO	Moldavian
Maori	MI	MR	Marathi
Marathi	MR	MS	Malay
Moldavian	MO	MT	Maltese
Mongolian	MN	MY	Burmese
Nauru	NA	NA	Nauru
Nepali	NE	NE	Nepali
Norwegian	NO	NL	Dutch
Occitan	OC	NO	Norwegian
Oriya	OR	OC	Occitan
Oromo, Afan	OM	OM	Oromo, Afan
Pashto, Pushto	PS	OR	Oriya
Persian	FA	PA	Punjabi
Polish	PL	PL	Polish
Portuguese	PT	PS	Pashto, Pushto
Punjabi	PA	PT	Portuguese
Quechua	QU	QU	Quechua
Rhaeto-Romance	RM	RM	Rhaeto-Romance
Romanian	RO	RN	Kirundi
Russian	RU	RO	Romanian
Samoan	SM	RU	Russian
Sangro	SG	RW	Kinyarwanda
Sanskrit	SA	SA	Sanskrit
Serbian	SR	SD	Sindhi
Serbo-Croatian	SH	SG	Sangro
Sesotho	ST	SH	Serbo-Croatian
Setswana	TN	SI	Singhalese
Shona	SN	SK	Slovak
Sindhi	SD	SL	Slovenian
Singhalese	SI	SM	Samoan
Siswati	SS	SN	Shona
Slovak	SK	SO	Somali
Slovenian	SL	SQ	Albanian
Somali	SO	SR	Serbian
Spanish	ES	SS	Siswati
Sudanese	SU	ST	Sesotho
Swahili	SW	SU	Sudanese
Swedish	SV	SV	Swedish
Tagalog	TL	SW	Swahili
Tajik	TG	TA	Tamil
Tamil	TA	TE	Tegulu
Tatar	TT	TG	Tajik
Tegulu	TE	TH	Thai
Thai	TH	TI	Tigrinya
Tibetan	BO	TK	Turkmen
Tigrinya	TI	TL	Tagalog
Tonga	TO	TN	Setswana
Tsonga	TS	TO	Tonga
Turkish	TR	TR	Turkish
Turkmen	TK	TS	Tsonga
Twi	TW	TT	Tatar
Ukrainian	UK	TW	Twi
Urdu	UR	UK	Ukrainian
Uzbek	UZ	UR	Urdu
Vietnamese	VI	UZ	Uzbek
Volapuk	VO	VI	Vietnamese
Welsh	CY	VO	Volapuk
Wolof	WO	WO	Wolof
Xhosa	XH	XH	Xhosa
Yiddish	JI	YO	Yoruba
Yoruba	YO	ZH	Chinese
Zulu	ZU	ZU	Zulu

Examples

The lang attribute applies to all HTML tags except applet, base, basefront, br, frame, frameset, iframe, param and script. The following examples shows the attribute in use for the html and span tags.

<span lang="el">
      place text of foreign language here
</span>

<html lang="en-us">
   <body>
      <p>... Content here, set to U.S. English ...</p>
   </body>
</html>