The Hæven of John

The HTML lang attribute defines the language of the content enclosed within the element it was declared (eg. <span lang="fil">My Content</span>). The codes are called subtag, and for my Filipino readers there are only three subtag types you should worry about - language-region/country-script language-Script-REGION. (The full format: language-extended_language-Script-REGION-variant-extension-privateuse.) See the table below:

If you want to find the subtags for a particular language, previously we have to check different websites and plenty of official code lists. A time consuming task (although normally you only have to do this once), right? Well, the latest official subtags can now be found in the IANA Language Subtag Registry. It is now the one universal source for all valid subtags.

So, according to this latest list, the subtags that are related to the Philippines are the following (if I missed anything, please leave a comment below)

Now that we have the subtags that we need, we can start writing the correct lang value for any Philippine language and script. See the list below:

• lang="en-PH" - use this if you are a Filipino and/or you grew and learned English in the Philippines. Because more likely than not, you will be using English words that are exclusive to the Philippines, and that’s just one of the reason.
• lang="fil" - use this if you are writing in “Filipino” (not “Tagalog")
• lang="bik" - if writing in “Bikol”
• lang="ceb" - if writing in “Cebuano”
• lang="tl" - use this if you are writing in “Tagalog” (not “Filipino")
• lang="hil" - writing in “Hiligaynon”
• lang="ilo" - writing in “Iloko”
• lang="pag" - in “Pangasinan”
• lang="pam" - in “Kapampangan”
• lang="war" - “Waray”
• lang="phi" - use this if you are writing in another Philippine Language that has no corresponding ISO-639-2 code

Then if you want to write something in Baybayin script, you have to enclose it correctly with the script subtag “Tglg". Simply add it after the language subtag, like so:

• lang="fil-Tglg" - use this if you are writing in Baybayin
• lang="bik-Tglg" - use this if you are writing in Bikol using Baybayin
• lang="ceb-Tglg" - use this if you are writing Cebuano using Baybayin
• lang="phi-Tglg" - use this if you are writing in Baybayin using another Philippine Language that has no ISO-639-2 subtag

Why do we have no lang="tl-Tglg"? Because of this Suppress-Script: Latn - if you check it above again. If I understood it correctly, it means that the Tagalog language as per the official standard should always be written in Latin script. If we use lang="tl-Tglg" it is an illegal language, and probably the application will either ignore it altogether or just drop the “Tglg” script subtag.

I may be wrong, it could also mean that there is no need to use lang="tl-Latn" because “Tagalog” is widely written in Latin since the 1900s. I will update this once I learn more. So continuing…

Finally, more examples!

If your website is mainly about Iriga, then you should adjust your website’s header files accordingly:

Code:

If you want to write “Happy Father’s Day” in Baybayin, simply do this:
<span lang="fil-Tglg">ᜋᜎᜒᜄᜌᜅ᜔ ᜀᜍᜏ᜔ ᜈᜅ᜔ ᜋᜅ ᜀᜋ</span>.

Or you can also do it like this: <span lang="fil-Tglg">&#5899;&#5902;&#5906;&#5892;&#5900;&#5893;&#5908; &#5888;&#5901;&#5903;&#5908; &#5896;&#5893;&#5908; &#5899;&#5893; &#5888;&#5899;</span>

Both will give this result:

ᜋᜎᜒᜄᜌᜅ᜔ ᜀᜍᜏ᜔ ᜈᜅ᜔ ᜋᜅ ᜀᜋ

(if written letter-by-letter in Latin it says: Maligayang Araw nang manga Ama)