The IETF has just published a new specification describing how to construct language tags. The new RFC 4646, which replaces RFC 3066, with the new IANA Language Subtag Registry address a number of long standing issues with language subtags.

This article has been completely rewritten to provide a gentle introduction to how to construct language tags following the new rules.

Thanks to the Korean translation team, WTB Language Group, the FAQ-based article “Checking HTTP Headers” has now been translated into Korean (language negotiated). This is our first Korean translation.

Thanks to the Arabic Translation team‏, WTB Language Group, the article “What you need to know about the bidi algorithm and inline markup” has now been translated into Arabic (language negotiated).

Thanks to the Hebrew Translation team,‏ WTB Language, the FAQ-based article “CSS character encoding declarations” has now been translated into Hebrew (language negotiated).

Thanks to the Tłumaczenia Dokumentów Team the FAQ-based article “International & multilingual web sites” has now been translated into Polish (language negotiated).

Thanks to the Tłumaczenia Dokumentów Team the FAQ-based article “Document character set” has now been translated into Polish (language negotiated).

Thanks to the Greek translation team, WTB Language Group, the FAQ-based article “CSS character encoding declarations” has now been translated into Greek (language negotiated). This is our first Greek translation.

Thanks to the Tłumaczenia Dokumentów Team the FAQ-based article “CSS character encoding declarations” has now been translated into Polish(language negotiated). [search key: qa-css-charset]

The IETF has just announced two new RFCs, RFC 4646 Tags for Identifying Languages, and RFC 4647 Matching of Language Tags. These two documents together constitute BCP 47. They render obsolete RFC 3066 (which replaced the earlier RFC 1766).

The RFCs describe how to create and match language tags, for example for use as values in the HTML lang and XML xml:lang attributes. The new specifications are backward compatible, but provide significant extensions to the language tag concept by including such things as script tags, UN region codes, variant tags, etc., for use when needed.

The W3C Internationalization Activity is preparing an article to provide a gentle introduction to the new tag structure. There is also an existing article that alludes to some of the reasons behind the change.

Thanks to Maurício Samy Silva the article “Character Encodings” has now been updated in Brazilian Portuguese (language negotiated). [search key: article-o-charset]