HTML Guide for lang
Instead of using the isolang attribute to define the language of the document, you can use lang with an ISO 639-1 two character code.
For example, for Portuguese:
<html lang="pt">The specified language code in the lang attribute of the <html> tag is not a valid ISO code.
Always use a language attribute on the <html> tag to declare the default language of the text in the page, using the lang property.
Example:
<html lang="fr">Based on the content of the document, the W3C Validator has determined that it’s written in Arabic, and it suggests you specify the direction of text from right to left like this:
<html dir="rtl" lang="ar">Based on the content of the document, the W3C validator thinks that it’s written in English. Consider explicitly specifying the language using the lang property.
Example:
<html lang="en">Based on the content of the document, the W3C validator thinks that it’s written in English, but the lang property in the <html> element specifies a different language. Check the language of the document, if it matches the lang property you can safely ignore and mute this warning.
Example:
<html lang="fr">Based on the content of the document, the W3C validator has determined that the main language doesn’t match the one specified in the lang property of the <html> tag. Check the language of the document, if it matches the lang property you can safely ignore and mute this warning.
Elements that have the xml:lang attribute also need a matching lang attribute. In HTML5 documents, using just the lang attribute is enough.