XML in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition

xml:lang

Since XML documents are written in Unicode, XML is an excellent choice for multilingual documents, such as an Arabic commentary on a Greek text (something that couldn’t be done with almost any other character set). In such multilingual documents, it’s useful to identify in which language a particular section of text is written. For instance, a spellchecker that only knows English shouldn’t try to check a French quote.

Each XML element may have an xml:lang attribute that specifies the language in which the content of that element is written. For example, the previous maxim might look like this:

<maxim xml:lang="el">
  &#x3C3;&#x3CC;&#3C6;&#3BF;&#3C2; &#x3AD;&#3B1;&#3C5;&#3C4;&#x3CC;&#x3BD;
  &#x3B3;&#x3B9;&#x3B3;&#x3BD;&#X3CE;&#x3C3;&#x3BA;&#x3B5;&#x3B9;
</maxim>

This identifies it as Greek. The specific code used, el, comes from the Greek word for Greek, ε λ λ η ν ι κ ά.