30 lines
1.7 KiB
XML
30 lines
1.7 KiB
XML
<page title="What are they?">
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<p><em>Language tags</em> are a way to <em>tag</em> digital resources
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to indicate in what <wikipedia name="language">human
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language</wikipedia> they are. They are also used by software to tell
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an user's preference about languages.</p>
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<p>They can express the language itself but also the writing system,
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the national variant and many other things.</p>
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<p>A few examples of language tags:</p>
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<ul>
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<li><code>fr</code>: <wikipedia name="French language">French</wikipedia> language,</li>
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<li><code>en-AU</code>: <wikipedia name="English language">English</wikipedia> language, as
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written and spoken in <wikipedia>Australia</wikipedia>,</li>
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<li><code>az-Latn-IR</code>, <wikipedia name="Azerbaijani language">Azeri</wikipedia> language,
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written in the <wikipedia name="Latin alphabet">Latin</wikipedia> script, as used in <wikipedia>Iran</wikipedia>.</li>
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</ul>
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<p>They are specified in <wikipedia name="Internet Engineering Task Force">IETF</wikipedia>
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<wikipedia name="Request for Comments">RFC</wikipedia> <em>5646</em> (<a
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href="https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5646">available
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online</a>).</p>
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<p>Language tags are made of <em>subtags</em> separated by
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hyphens. The list of possible subtags is mostly directly copied from
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various <wikipedia name="International Organization for Standardization">ISO</wikipedia> standards such as <wikipedia name="ISO
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639">ISO 639</wikipedia>.</p>
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<p>They are used in many formats and protocols for instance in
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<wikipedia>XML</wikipedia> (through the <code>xml:lang</code>
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attribute) and in <wikipedia>HTTP</wikipedia> (the browser can
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indicate to the <wikipedia name="World Wide Web">Web</wikipedia> server what language the
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user prefers, should the Web server have several versions).</p>
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</page>
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