Modifying attributes which are not designated as animatable

If I have an SVG document in which I use script to change an attribute
which is not animatable, should the change be reflected in rendering?

Example:

  <svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="400" height="400">
    <script><![CDATA[
      function f() {
        var a = document.getElementById("a");
        a.setAttributeNS(null, "systemLangauge", "zh");
      }
    ]]></script>
    <rect x="10" y="10" width="20" height="20" fill="red" stroke="black"
        stroke-width="3" onclick="f()"/>
    <g font-size="24pt">
      <switch>
        <text id="a" systemLanguage="en" x="100" y="200">first</text>
        <text x="100" y="200">default</text>
      </switch>
    </g>
  </svg>

Clicking on the red rect will change the systemLanguage attribute of the
first text in the switch from "en" to "zh".  Assuming my user agent is
set to English, after clicking on the rect the displayed text should
change from "first" to "default".

Is this the right behaviour?  Or because the systemLanguage attribute is
not animatable, can the browser ignore subsequent changes to that
attribute?

Thanks,

Cameron

-- 
Cameron McCormack
  // clm@csse.monash.edu.au
  // http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~clm/
  // icq 26955922