What is the difference between "lang" and "type" attributes in a script tag?

Question

For <script> HTML tags, what is the technical difference between lang=Javascript and type=text/javascript?

I usually use both, because I've always assumed that older browsers need one or the other.

Answer 1

The OP specifically said "lang" not "language". The much older "language" tag would have been Javascript or VBScript.

But the current and seemingly valid "lang" tag is actually which written language like English, Spanish, Japanese. Microsoft's Visual Studio provides a dropdown list for the values for "lang" and they are all like en-us, fr, ja, etc.. for English US, French, Japanese, etc...

I'm thinking there could be valid reasons for using this tag if you have a complex multilingual setup - maybe there's a content mgmt system that could support this and then deliver the proper javascript file - like jQuery control resources?

Answer 2

Per the HTML 4.01 Spec:

type: This attribute specifies the scripting language of the element's contents and overrides the default scripting language. The scripting language is specified as a content type (e.g., "text/javascript"). Authors must supply a value for this attribute. There is no default value for this attribute.

language: Deprecated. This attribute specifies the scripting language of the contents of this element. Its value is an identifier for the language, but since these identifiers are not standard, this attribute has been deprecated in favor of type.