Code:
<i class="french" lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">
If I'm reading the various references I've found, it looks like you might not need that class in the <i> tags. You could use the :lang pseudo-class to match the languages:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/:lang
The CSS syntax is:
Code:
:lang(languagecode) {
css declarations;
}