Tamil

TADravidian

தமிழ்

Spoken by approximately 85 million people worldwide

Writing Systems

Tamil

Countries

IndiaSri LankaSingaporeMalaysia

Usage in Code

<!-- HTML lang attribute -->
<html lang="ta">

/* CSS language selector */
:lang(ta) { font-family: sans-serif; }

/* Accept-Language header */
Accept-Language: ta

/* Intl API */
new Intl.DateTimeFormat('ta').format(new Date())

About Tamil

Tamil (தமிழ்) is a Dravidian language identified by the ISO 639-1 code "ta". It is spoken by approximately 85 million people, primarily in India, Sri Lanka, Singapore, Malaysia. The language uses the Tamil writing system.

In web development, the ISO 639-1 language code is used in HTML lang attributes, HTTP Accept-Language headers, the JavaScript Intl API for locale-aware formatting, and content negotiation. Setting the correct language code improves accessibility for screen readers, enables proper text-to-speech pronunciation, and helps search engines serve content to the right audience. Browsers use this code for spell-checking, hyphenation, and font selection.

For SEO, specifying the content language via the lang attribute and hreflang tags helps search engines understand which language version of a page to show to users in different regions. This is essential for multilingual websites targeting international audiences.

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