totn JavaScript

JavaScript: Language Tags (BCP 47)

BCP 47 Language Tags is the Internet Best Current Practices (BCP) for language tags. The purpose of these language tags is to establish codes to help identify languages both spoken and written. A language tag is composed of a sequence of one or more subtags such as language, region, variant and script subtags. When a language tag is comprised of more than one subtag, the subtag values are separated by the "-" character.

You will most commonly find language tags written with 2 subtags - language and region. For example:

en-US

The language tag "en-US" is composed 2 subtags separated by the "-" character. The value "en" is the language subtag for English and the value "US" is the region subtag for the United States. Therefore, the language tag "en-US" represents US English.

However, language tags can also include additional subtags for variants and scripts, for example:

hy-Latn-IT-arevela

The language tag above would represent Eastern Armenian written in Latin script, as used in Italy.

Since it is impossible to list all of the BCP 47 language tags and their combinations, we have provided a list of what we have found to be the most commonly used language tags (defined using Language and Region subtags):


(Enter a value in the field above to quickly find a language tag in the table below)

Language Tag Language Region Description
ar-SA Arabic Saudi Arabia Arabic (Saudi Arabia)
bn-BD Bangla Bangladesh Bangla (Bangladesh)
bn-IN Bangla India Bangla (India)
cs-CZ Czech Czech Republic Czech (Czech Republic)
da-DK Danish Denmark Danish (Denmark)
de-AT German Austria Austrian German
de-CH German Switzerland "Swiss" German
de-DE German Germany Standard German (as spoken in Germany)
el-GR Greek Greece Modern Greek
en-AU English Australia Australian English
en-CA English Canada Canadian English
en-GB English United Kingdom British English
en-IE English Ireland Irish English
en-IN English India Indian English
en-NZ English New Zealand New Zealand English
en-US English United States US English
en-ZA English South Africa English (South Africa)
es-AR Spanish Argentina Argentine Spanish
es-CL Spanish Chile Chilean Spanish
es-CO Spanish Columbia Colombian Spanish
es-ES Spanish Spain Castilian Spanish (as spoken in Central-Northern Spain)
es-MX Spanish Mexico Mexican Spanish
es-US Spanish United States American Spanish
fi-FI Finnish Finland Finnish (Finland)
fr-BE French Belgium Belgian French
fr-CA French Canada Canadian French
fr-CH French Switzerland "Swiss" French
fr-FR French France Standard French (especially in France)
he-IL Hebrew Israel Hebrew (Israel)
hi-IN Hindi India Hindi (India)
hu-HU Hungarian Hungary Hungarian (Hungary)
id-ID Indonesian Indonesia Indonesian (Indonesia)
it-CH Italian Switzerland "Swiss" Italian
it-IT Italian Italy Standard Italian (as spoken in Italy)
ja-JP Japanese Japan Japanese (Japan)
ko-KR Korean Republic of Korea Korean (Republic of Korea)
nl-BE Dutch Belgium Belgian Dutch
nl-NL Dutch The Netherlands Standard Dutch (as spoken in The Netherlands)
no-NO Norwegian Norway Norwegian (Norway)
pl-PL Polish Poland Polish (Poland)
pt-BR Portugese Brazil Brazilian Portuguese
pt-PT Portugese Portugal European Portuguese (as written and spoken in Portugal)
ro-RO Romanian Romania Romanian (Romania)
ru-RU Russian Russian Federation Russian (Russian Federation)
sk-SK Slovak Slovakia Slovak (Slovakia)
sv-SE Swedish Sweden Swedish (Sweden)
ta-IN Tamil India Indian Tamil
ta-LK Tamil Sri Lanka Sri Lankan Tamil
th-TH Thai Thailand Thai (Thailand)
tr-TR Turkish Turkey Turkish (Turkey)
zh-CN Chinese China Mainland China, simplified characters
zh-HK Chinese Hond Kong Hong Kong, traditional characters
zh-TW Chinese Taiwan Taiwan, traditional characters