Patient Preferred Language

Language related demographic information is complex and its representation varies across HL7 standards. For simplicity, this IG includes information about the most accepted set of language codes for practical use across standards.

This value set defines a set of codes for the representation of the names of languages. It uses the list of ISO 639-2 concepts using the ISO 639-1 2-digit code for a concept where possible and the 3-digit terminological code where there is no 2-digit code.

https://terminology.hl7.org/6.4.0/ValueSet-Languages.html

In the United States, language codes for HL7 FHIR are drawn from the IETF BCP 47 standard (used in HL7 v3 and FHIR) and represented using RFC 5646 tags like "en-US". In HL7 CDA and FHIR, the language code is typically used in languageCommunication or communication.language elements.

The most common languages spoken in the U.S., and their corresponding BCP 47 language codes, include:

Language	RFC 5646 Tag	Description
English (United States)	en-US	Default/most common
Spanish (United States)	es-US	Common for Hispanic Populations
Chinese (Simplified)	zh-Hans	Includes Mandarin
Chinese (Traditional)	zh-Hant	Includes Cantonese
Vietnamese	vi	Southeast Asian communities
Tagalog (Filipino)	tl	Philippines communities
Korean	ko	Korean-American communities
Arabic	ar	Middle Eastern/North African communities
Russian	ru	Eastern European communities
French (U.S. speakers)	fr	Haitian Creole speakers often fall here
Haitian Creole	ht	Haitian communities
Portuguese	pt	Brazilian/Portuguese communities
German	de	Older immigrant communities
Hindi	hi	Indian-American communities
Urdu	ur	Pakistani communities
Japanese	ja	Japanese-American populations
Polish	pl	Polish-American populations