The xml:lang can be used to determine the language for a node or a node-set. The attribute can be used to store language-specific data in an XML document:

	<phrases> <greeting xml:lang="en">Hello!</greeting> <greeting xml:lang="no">Hei!</greeting> <greeting xml:lang="fr">Salut!</greeting> <greeting xml:lang="es">Hola!</greeting> <greeting xml:lang="de">Sweinhund!</greeting> </phrases>

The XSL stylesheet can use the lang() function to select the element with the desired language:

	<xsl:template match="greeting"> <xsl:if test="lang("de")> <xsl:value-of select="."/> <xsl:text> Grossglucklicher wunche!</xsl:text> </xsl:if> </xsl:template>

The DOM interface has been given a method that returns the language for a given node. The language is returned as a string (on whatever format is used in the XML document - should be iso), and may be null if no language is defined.

	public String DOM.getLanguage(int node);

The BasisLibrary class has a static method that will compare the language of the context node with some other language and return the result as a boolean.

	public static boolean BasisLibrary.testLanguage(String language, DOM dom, int node);

The compiled code for the lang() method calls this method in the BasisLibrary and leaves the result on the stack for the calling element.