title: Zettelmarkup: Supported Attribute Values for Natural Languages
role: manual
tags: #manual #reference #zettelmarkup #zettelstore
syntax: zmk
backward: 00001007040100 00001007050000
box-number: 1
copyright: (c) 2020-present by Detlef Stern <ds@zettelstore.de>
created: 20210126175322
forward: 00001007040100 00001007050000
lang: en
license: EUPL-1.2-or-later
modified: 20260612164205
published: 20260612164205
visibility: public

With an [attribute](00001007050000) it is possible to specify the natural language of a text region.
This is important, if you want to render your markup into an environment, where this is significant.
HTML is such an environment.

To specify the language within an attribute, you must use the key `lang`.
The language itself is specified according to the language definition in [RFC-5646](https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc5646).

Examples:

* `{lang=en}` for the English language
* `{lang=en-us}` for the dialect of English spoken in the United States of America
* `{lang=de}` for the German language
* `{lang=de-at}` for the dialect of German language spoken in Austria
* `{lang=de-de}` for the dialect of German language spoken in Germany

The actual [typographic quotations marks](00001007040100) (`""...""`) are derived from the current language.
The language of a zettel (meta key `lang`) can be overwritten by an attribute: `""...""{lang=fr}`.