language

• Obligation:  See Application Profiles
• Occurrence:  See Application Profiles
• Conditions:  See Application Profiles
• Scheme:  See Application Profiles; see also RFC 1766, ISO 639-2

Element Semantics (Definition)

A language of the intellectual content of the resource.

General

• Name:  language
• Label:  Language
• Namespace:  http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/
• Registration Authority:  Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI)
• Notes:  Recommended best practice is to use RFC 3066 [RFC3066], which, in conjunction with ISO 639 [ISO639], defines two- and three-letter primary language tags with optional subtags. Examples include "en" or "eng" for English, "akk" for Akkadian, and "en-GB" for English used in the United Kingdom.

Best Practices

1. Indicates the language(s) of the intellectual content of the resource. This implies the language(s) in which a text is written or the spoken language(s) of an audio or video resource. Visual images do not usually have a language unless there is significant text in a caption or in the image.
2. A resource may include multiple languages. Use separate Language elements (i.e., repeat the element) to enter multiple languages
3. Where practical, the content of this field should coincide with RFC 1766: “Tags for the Identification of Languages”. Examples: en, de, es, fi, fr, ja, th, and zh. See RFC 1766.
4. In addition to using language codes, if needed, a textual description of the nature of the language may be included in the Description element. Example: In German and English, in parallel columns.
5. Country codes may be added in combination with the language codes as in “en-UK” for English, United Kingdom or “en-US” for English, United States. [Note: Country codes are defined in ISO 3166.
6. Language designations for content should be provided even for collections that in their local environment are entirely in one (a default) language since machine processing by language is not possible otherwise when those records are merged into a union catalog such as GEM.

Metadata Encodings Examples

• Resource Description Framework (RDF/XML)
  

  Example 1:
  
  <?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>
  <rdf:RDF xmlns:rdf='http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#'
      xmlns:rdfs="http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#"
      xmlns:dc='http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/'
      xmlns:dcterms='http://purl.org/dc/terms/'>
  <rdf:Description>
      <dc:language>
          <dcterms:RFC1766>
          <rdf:value>en</rdf:value>
          <rdfs:label>English</rdfs:label>
          </dcterms:RFC1766>
      </dc:language>
  </rdf:Description>
  </rdf:RDF>
  
  Example 2 (U.S. English):
  
  <?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>
  <rdf:RDF xmlns:rdf='http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#'
      xmlns:rdfs="http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#"
      xmlns:dc='http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/'
      xmlns:dcterms='http://purl.org/dc/terms/'>
  <rdf:Description>
      <dc:language>
          <dcterms:RFC1766>
          <rdf:value>en</rdf:value>
          <rdfs:label>English</rdfs:label>
          </dcterms:RFC1766>
      </dc:language>
  </rdf:Description>
  </rdf:RDF>

• XML (Tags & Attributes)
  

  Example 1:
  
  <?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>
  <record xmlns:xsi='http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance'
      xmlns:dc='http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/'
      xmlns:dcterms='http://purl.org/dc/terms/'>
  <dc:language xsi:type='dcterms:RFC1766'>
      en
  </dc:language>
  </record>
  
  Example 2:
  
  <?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>
  <record xmlns:xsi='http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance'
      xmlns:dc='http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/'
      xmlns:dcterms='http://purl.org/dc/terms/'>
    <dc:language xsi:type='dcterms:RFC1766'>
      en-US
    </dc:language>
  </record>
  

• Crosswalks
  IEEE LOM: 1.4:General.Language
  MARC: 546$a (Language note)