HTML Language Codes

Master HTML with Coddy

Learn HTML through interactive, bite-sized lessons. Build real websites and see your code come to life instantly.

HTML language codes are essential for specifying the language of your web content. They play a crucial role in accessibility, search engine optimization (SEO), and proper rendering of text.

What are HTML Language Codes?

Language codes are standardized identifiers that represent human languages. In HTML, these codes are used to declare the primary language of a document or specific parts of it.

Why Use Language Codes?

Improve accessibility for screen readers
Enhance SEO by helping search engines understand your content
Enable proper text rendering and hyphenation
Support language-specific styling with CSS

How to Use Language Codes in HTML

The most common way to specify a language is by using the lang attribute. It can be applied to the <html> tag for the entire document or to specific elements for multilingual content.

Example 1: Setting the Document Language

<html lang="en">
  <!-- Document content -->
</html>

In this example, "en" specifies that the document is in English.

Example 2: Specifying Language for a Specific Element

<p>This paragraph is in English.</p>
<p lang="es">Este párrafo está en español.</p>

Here, we've used "es" to indicate that the second paragraph is in Spanish.

Common Language Codes

Language	Code
English	en
Spanish	es
French	fr
German	de
Chinese (Simplified)	zh-CN

Best Practices

Always specify a language for your HTML documents
Use language codes for individual elements when dealing with multilingual content
Combine language codes with country codes for regional variations (e.g., "en-US" for American English)
Ensure the language code matches the actual content language

Related Concepts

To further enhance your HTML skills, explore these related topics:

By mastering HTML language codes, you'll create more accessible and SEO-friendly web pages, improving the overall user experience for your visitors.