date() and setlocale

[rantsh]

Can anyone give me some pointers on the PROPER way to use date with setlocale so I could choose to print the date on english, spanish or anyother language?

 

ie I want to be able to output something like

 

if($_COOKIE['lang'] == "eng") {
     //prints January 1st, 1900;
} elseif($_COOKIE['lang'] == "esp") {
    //prints Enero 1, 1900
} else {
   ... print in default language
}

 

Thanks for any pointers you may share...