Meta Elements: A Field Guide - Meta Element: Language Attribute
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Websites are written in a programming language, as you well know, but that language has nothing to do with the language attribute. Its purpose really is to let search engines know in what natural language your web page content is written. For example, if you have a blog where you write French poetry, you should go ahead and put up a white flag and surrender now. You have failed at life. In addition, you would want to add a two letter abbreviation to your language attribute signifying that it is, indeed, in Francois.
Here is an example of it in use:
<meta http-equiv="Content-Language" content="FR">
That tells the search engines two things: 1) That your content is written in French and 2) That you are a cheese-eating, French fry-hating, dry-humor having, surrender monkey. [But at least your mother probably doesn't smell of elderberries. --Ed.]
Below you will find a nifty table with a bunch of language codes, should you ever find yourself suddenly multi-lingual and in need:
Abbreviation | Language |
BG | Bulgarian |
CS | Czech |
DA | Danish |
DE | German |
EL | Greek |
EN | English |
EN-GB | English-Great Britain (God Save the Queen!) |
EN-US | English (United States) |
ES | Spanish |
ES-ES | Spanish (Spain) |
FI | Finnish |
FR | French |
FR-CA | French (Quebec) |
FR-FR | French (France) |
HR | Croatian |
IT | Italian |
JA | Japanese |
KO | Korean |
NL | Dutch |
NO | Norwegian |
PL | Polish |
PT | Portuguese |
RU | Russian |
SV | Swedish |
ZH | Chinese |
Next: Meta Element: Description Attribute >>
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