I have a drop down where the user selects a language:
<select>
<option>English</option>
<option>Spanish</option>
</select>
Building on Oded's answer, you could also set the default option but not make it a selectable option if it's just dummy text. For example you could do:
<option selected="selected" disabled="disabled">Select a language</option>
This would show "Select a language" before the user clicks the select box but the user wouldn't be able to select it because of the disabled attribute.