HTMLElement.lang

The HTMLElement.lang property gets or sets the base language of an element's attribute values and text content.

The language code returned by this property is defined in the Tags for Identifying Languages (BCP47) IETF document. Common examples include "en" for English, "ja" for Japanese, "es" for Spanish and so on. The default value of this attribute is unknown. Note that this attribute, though valid at the individual element level described here, is most often specified for the root element of the document.

This also only works with the lang attribute and not with xml:lang.

Syntax

var languageUsed = elementNodeReference.lang; // Get the value of lang
elementNodeReference.lang = NewLanguage; // Set new value for lang

languageUsed is a string variable that gets the language in which the text of the current element is written. NewLanguage is a string variable with its value setting the language in which the text of the current element is written.

Example

// this snippet compares the base language and 
// redirects to another url based on language
if (document.documentElement.lang === "en") {
  window.location.href = "Some_document.html.en";
} else if (document.documentElement.lang === "ru") {
  window.location.href = "Some_document.html.ru";
}

Specification

Browser compatibilityUpdate compatibility data on GitHub