What is the language code of Jawi script Malay language for HTML attribute?

Question

General information

Jawi here is not referring to the Djawi language, instead it is referring to the Jawi script of the Malay language.

Jawi is the older standard of writing script for Malay language and it is based on Arabic, before the standard was replaced with Rumi script which is based on Latin. However, Jawi is still used extensively in Malaysia and Brunei.

In Brunei, Jawi is co-official alongside Rumi (Latin) for writing Malay texts, and all public road names and building name signs are required to be written in both Jawi and Rumi.

In Malaysia, Jawi is not an official script anymore but the government-endorsed official textbooks for Islamic Education in all primary and secondary schools are written entirely in Jawi script Malay language, plus a few private kindergartens and universities are also using Jawi for the same subject. Jawi is still taught in Islamic Education class. All national examination papers for Islamic Education are written in both Jawi and Rumi scripts and the answer can be written in either script. In addition to that, the national examination paper of the Malay language subject itself could also be answered in Jawi script even though the question is only in Rumi script.

My problem

I'm making a website which would be written in both Rumi and Jawi script of Malay (and some other languages), people who click on "Bahasa Melayu (Rumi)" will only read the website in Rumi script whereas those who click on "بهاس ملايو (جاوي)" will only read the website in Jawi script, (the same for those who click on "English" will only read the website in English, and "日本語" for Japanese). All the pages will be hand-written, not using any machine translation.

I'm planning to include the proper language tag in the HTML language attribute so that online bots (eg. crawlers) would not get confused between the two different scripts, but I can't find the exact language code for Jawi script Malay language. I do know that the code ms is used for Malay but it is usually used only for the Rumi script Malay language and the bots might think the Jawi script page is actually written in Rumi script if I just use the general ms code as the language attribute on the Jawi page.

Some people are suggesting to write the tag as mfa which is actually the code for Kelantan-Pattani Malay dialect as the dialect is usually written in Jawi only, but that will be misleading as I will be writing my website in Rumi and Jawi script of standard Malay (as in neutralized Malaysian-Bruneian Malay), not of Kelantan-Pattani Malay dialect.

Some people also suggest to write Rumi script Malay as ms-MY (using Malaysia country code reference) and Jawi script Malay as ms-BN (using Brunei country code reference) but this would still be misleading as Brunei uses both Rumi and Jawi, not exclusively Jawi.

Note: The website will also be written in Kedah Malay dialect meo which is my actual native language, also in both Jawi and Rumi in the future. But for the time being, my concern is for the standard Malay language.

How Malay looks like

|    English    |  Malay (Rumi) |    Pronunciation    |  Malay (Jawi) |
| ------------- | ------------- | ------------------- | ------------- |
|    water      |       air     |        /a.er/       |      اءير    |
|     air       |      udara    |      /u.da.ra/      |     اودارا   |
|    wall       |     dinding   |      /din.deŋ/      |     دينديڠ   |
|     car       |     kereta    |      /kə.re.ta/     |      كريتا   |
|    train      |   kereta api  |   /kə.re.ta.a.pi/   |    كريتا اڤي |
|    debug      |   nyahpepijat |  /ɲah.pə.pi.dʒat/   |   ڽهڤڤيجت    |
|  programming  | pengaturcaraan|/pə.ŋa.tor.tʃa.ra.an/| ڤڠاتورچاراان|

Links for the words in Wiktionary for your reference: air, udara, kereta, nyahpepijat, pengaturcaraan Search for the word yourself if there's anything you don't know because this website requires me to have 10 reputation points before I can link more than 8 links.

The question

So that's what's leading me to ask this question, what is the language code of Jawi script Malay language for the HTML attribute?

Answer 1

After comprehensive reading and finding information, including reading W3C Recommendations for HTML5, I came back to answer my question as it now obviously has an answer.

To differentiate Rumi script Malay (which uses Latin script) and Jawi script Malay (which uses Arabic script) while still preserving it for multiple country use we could use the more complete version of IETF Language Code in HTML.

The Rumi script is based on Latin letters which uses the code Latn and the Jawi script is based on Arabic letters which uses the code Arab under ISO 15924, which is the standard script code, usable as part of language code for HTML.

If we need to differentiate the specific locale based off countries, we can also append the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code for the countries as part of the language code for HTML.

This means that the language code for the HTML lang attribute could be written like this:

• Malay (general) - ms
• Malay (Rumi script) - ms-Latn
• Malay (Jawi script) - ms-Arab
• Malaysian (general) - ms-MY
• Malaysian (Rumi script) - ms-Latn-MY
• Malaysian (Jawi script) - ms-Arab-MY
• Bruneian (general) - ms-BN
• Bruneian (Rumi script) - ms-Latn-BN
• Bruneian (Jawi script) - ms-Arab-BN

Also, for the dialects Kedah Malay and Pattani Malay, we can write as follow:

• Kedah Malay (general) - meo (from ISO 639-3)

• Kedah Malay (Rumi script) - meo-Latn

• Kedah Malay (Jawi script) - meo-Arab

• Kedah Malay as used in Kedah, Malaysia (general) - meo-MY

• Kedah Malay in Malaysia (Rumi script) - meo-Latn-MY

• Kedah Malay in Malaysia (Jawi script) - meo-Arab-MY

• Kedah Malay as used in Satun, Thailand (general) - meo-TH

• Kedah Malay in Thailand (Rumi script) - meo-Latn-TH

• Kedah Malay in Thailand (Jawi script) - meo-Arab-TH

• Pattani Malay (general) - mfa (from ISO 639-3)

• Pattani Malay (Rumi script) - mfa-Latn

• Pattani Malay (Jawi script) - mfa-Arab

• Pattani Malay as used in Kelantan, Malaysia (general) - mfa-MY

• Pattani Malay in Malaysia (Rumi script) - mfa-Latn-MY

• Pattani Malay in Malaysia (Jawi script) - mfa-Arab-MY

• Pattani Malay as used in Pattani, Thailand (general) - mfa-TH

• Pattani Malay in Thailand (Rumi script) - mfa-Latn-TH

• Pattani Malay in Thailand (Jawi script) - mfa-Arab-TH