ISO 639
Encyclopedia
ISO 639 is a set of standards by the International Organization for Standardization
that is concerned with representation of names for language
and language groups.
It was also the name of the original standard, approved in 1967 (as ISO 639/R) and withdrawn in 2002. The ISO 639 set consists of six different parts.
data. The codes also find use in various applications, such as Wikipedia
URL
s for its different language editions.
Each part of the standard is maintained by a maintenance agency, which adds codes and changes the status of codes when needed.
Types (for individual languages):
Bibliographic and terminology codes
The first four columns contain codes for a representative of a specific type of relation between the parts of ISO 639. E.g. there are four elements that have a code in part 1, have a B/T code, and are macrolanguages per part 3. One representative of these four elements is "Persian" [fas].
. When codes for a wider range of languages were desired, more than 2 letter combinations could cover (a maximum of
), ISO 639-2
was developed using Alpha-3 codes (though the latter was formally published first).
, ISO 639-3
, and ISO 639-5
. Mathematically, the upper limit for the number of languages and language collections that can be so represented is
.
The common use of Alpha-3 codes by three parts of ISO 639 requires some coordination within a larger system.
Part 2 defines four special codes
The remainder is 17,576 – 547 = 17,029.
There are somewhere around six or seven thousand languages on Earth today. So those 17,029 codes are adequate to assign a unique code to each language, although some languages may end up with arbitrary codes that sound nothing like the traditional name(s) of that language.
. The upper limit for the number of languages and dialects that can be represented is
.
International Organization for Standardization
The International Organization for Standardization , widely known as ISO, is an international standard-setting body composed of representatives from various national standards organizations. Founded on February 23, 1947, the organization promulgates worldwide proprietary, industrial and commercial...
that is concerned with representation of names for language
Language
Language may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication...
and language groups.
It was also the name of the original standard, approved in 1967 (as ISO 639/R) and withdrawn in 2002. The ISO 639 set consists of six different parts.
Use of ISO 639 codes
The language codes defined in the several sections of ISO 639 are used for bibliographic purposes and, in computing and internet environments, as a key element of localeLocale
In computing, locale is a set of parameters that defines the user's language, country and any special variant preferences that the user wants to see in their user interface...
data. The codes also find use in various applications, such as Wikipedia
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...
URL
Uniform Resource Locator
In computing, a uniform resource locator or universal resource locator is a specific character string that constitutes a reference to an Internet resource....
s for its different language editions.
Delimiting languages
A multilingual page is contained by the CSS class "multilingual", with text in every language contained within the class "lang-xx", where xx is a lowercase ISO 639 two-letter or three-letter language code and the lang attribute. The lang attribute is contextually more correct, but the CSS required to hook into it is not supported by all browsers. If there is no two-letter code, the lowercase three-letter code is used. For text in an unknown language "und", (undetermined) is used.The six parts of the standard
| Standard | Name (Codes for the representation of names of languages – ...) | First edition | Current | No. in list |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ISO 639-1 ISO 639-1 ISO 639-1:2002, Codes for the representation of names of languages — Part 1: Alpha-2 code, is the first part of the ISO 639 series of international standards for language codes. Part 1 covers the registration of two-letter codes. There are 136 two-letter codes registered... |
Part 1: Alpha-2 code | 1967 (as ISO 639) | 2002 | 184 |
| ISO 639-2 ISO 639-2 ISO 639-2:1998, Codes for the representation of names of languages — Part 2: Alpha-3 code, is the second part of the ISO 639 standard, which lists codes for the representation of the names of languages. The three-letter codes given for each language in this part of the standard are referred to as... |
Part 2: Alpha-3 code | 1998 | 1998 | >450 |
| ISO 639-3 ISO 639-3 ISO 639-3:2007, Codes for the representation of names of languages — Part 3: Alpha-3 code for comprehensive coverage of languages, is an international standard for language codes in the ISO 639 series. The standard describes three‐letter codes for identifying languages. It extends the ISO 639-2... |
Part 3: Alpha-3 code for comprehensive coverage of languages | 2007 | 2007 | 7704 + local range |
| ISO 639-4 | Part 4: Implementation guidelines and general principles for language coding | 2010-07-16 | 2010-07-16 | (not a list) |
| ISO 639-5 ISO 639-5 ISO 639-5:2008 "Codes for the representation of names of languages—Part 5: Alpha-3 code for language families and groups" is an international standard published by the International Organization for Standardization . It was developed by ISO Technical Committee 37, Subcommittee 2, and first... |
Part 5: Alpha-3 code for language families and groups | 2008-05-15 | 2008-05-15 | 114 |
| ISO 639-6 ISO 639-6 ISO 639-6, Codes for the representation of names of languages — Part 6: Alpha-4 code for comprehensive coverage of language variants, is an international standard in the ISO 639 series, developed by... |
Part 6: Alpha-4 representation for comprehensive coverage of language variants | 2009-11-17 | 2009-11-17 | ? |
Each part of the standard is maintained by a maintenance agency, which adds codes and changes the status of codes when needed.
Characteristics of individual codes
Scopes:- Individual languages
- Macrolanguages (part 3)
- Collections of languages (part 1, 2, 5) (part 1 contains only 1 collection: bh; most collections are in part 2, and a few were added in part 5)
- Group
- Rest group
- Dialects
- Reserved for local use (part 2, 3)
- Special situations (part 2, 3)
Types (for individual languages):
- Living languages (part 2, 3) (all macrolanguages are living languages)
- Extinct languages (part 2, 3) (437, four in part 2 chb, chg, cop, sam; none in part 1)
- Ancient languages (part 1, 2, 3) (112, 19 are in part 2; and 5 of them, namely ave, chu, lat, pli and san, also have a code in part 1: ae, cu, la, pi, sa)
- Historic languages (part 2, 3) (63, 16 of them are in part 2, none has part 1 code)
- Constructed languages (part 2, 3) (19, 9 in part 2: epo, ina, ile, ido, vol, afh, jbo, tlh, zbl; five in part 1: eo, ia, ie, io, vo)
Bibliographic and terminology codes
- Bibliographic (part 2)
- Terminology (part 2)
Relations between the parts
The first four columns contain codes for a representative of a specific type of relation between the parts of ISO 639. E.g. there are four elements that have a code in part 1, have a B/T code, and are macrolanguages per part 3. One representative of these four elements is "Persian" [fas].
| ISO 639-1 | ISO 639-2 | ISO 639-3 | ISO 639-5 | # | Description of example |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| en | eng | eng | (-) | 132 | 185 in Part 1, subtract all special cases for Part 1 codes, 185-2-25-17-4-2-1-1-1=132 |
| nb | nob | nob | (-) | 2 | individual language, belongs to macrolanguage (nor), same code in Part 2 and has a code in Part 1. The two codes are: nob, non |
| ar | ara | ara (M) | (-) | 25 | Part 3 macro ISO 639 macrolanguage ISO 639-3 is an international standard for language codes. In defining some of its language codes, some are defined as macrolanguages covering either borderline cases between strongly divergent dialects and very closely related languages , or speech varieties that are considered to be either the... , 55 macro total, subtract special cases, 55-24-4-1-1=25 |
| de | ger/deu (B/T) | deu | (-) | 15 | 22 elements where B and T differ. Subtract special cases, 22-1-4-2=15. |
| cs | cze/ces (B/T) | ces | (-) | 1 | Element with differing B/T code and the letters from the Part 1 code are not the first two letters of the T code. |
| fa | per/fas (B/T) | fas (M) | (-) | 4 | Part 3 macro; the four T codes are: fas, msa, sqi, zho |
| hr | scr/hrv (B/T) | hrv | (-) | 2 | Part 2 B deprecated, the two T codes are: hrv, srp. Deprecated 2008-06-28. |
| no ("M") | nor ("M") | nor (M) | (-) | 1 | Part 3 macro and containing languages have codes in Part 1, nor: non, nob; no: nn, nb |
| bh | bih | (-) | ? | 1 | Bihari (bih) is marked as collective despite having an ISO 639-1 code which should only be for individual languages. The reason is that some individual Bihari languages Bihari languages Bihari is a name given to the western group of Eastern Indic languages, spoken in Bihar and neighboring states in India. Angika, Bajjika, Bhojpuri, Magahi, and Maithili are spoken in Nepal as well. The Angika, Bajjika, Bhojpuri, Magahi and Maithili speaking population form more than 21% of Nepalese... received an ISO 639-2 code, which makes Bihari a language family for the purposes of ISO 639-2, but a single language for the purposes of ISO 639-1. The single are: bho, mai, mag |
| sh | (-) | hbs (M) | (-) | 1 | Part 3 macro, ISO 639-1 code deprecated, no part 2 code |
| (bh) | bho | bho | (-) | 3 | individual language code in Part 2 + 3, belongs not to a macrolanguage, in Part 1 covered by a code which has equivalent in Part 2 which is a collective. The three codes are: bho, mai, mag |
| (bh) | (bih) | sck | (-) | individual language no code in Part 2, belongs not to a macrolanguage, in Part 1 covered by a code which has equivalent in Part 2 which is a collective. | |
| (-) | car | car | car | individual language in Part 2 and Part 3, but also included in Part 5 as a family | |
| (-) | ast | ast | (-) | individual language in Part 2 and Part 3, no code in Part 1 | |
| (-) | bal | bal (M) | (-) | 24 | individual language in Part 2 and macro in Part 3, no code in Part 1 |
| (-) | mis | mis | ? | 1 | special code: missing code |
| (-) | mul | mul | ? | 1 | special code: multilingual content |
| (-) | und | und | ? | 1 | special code: undetermined |
| (-) | zxx | zxx | ? | 1 | special code: added 2006-01-11 to declare the absence of linguistic information |
| (-) | qaa | qaa | ? | 520 | reserved for local use, range is qaa ... qtz |
| (-) | aus | (-) | aus | regular group in Part 2 | |
| (-) | afa | (-) | afa | In Part 2 a rest group, i.e. same code but different languages included. In Part 2 "afa" refers to an Afro-Asiatic language that does not have an individual-language identifier in Part 2, and that does not fall into the rest groups "ber - Berber (Other)", "cus - Cushitic (Other)", or "sem - Semitic (Other)", all of which are Afro-Asiatic language groups. | |
| (ar) | (ara "M") | arb | (-) | individual language, belongs to macrolanguage (ara), in Part 2 covered by the macrolanguage code, in Part 1 also covered | |
| (-) | (nic "R") | aaa | (-) | in Part 2 best covered by a rest group, "Niger-Kodofanian (Other)" | |
| (-) | (-) | (-) | sqj | group not coded in Part 2 |
- codes in Part 1 have one or two codes (B/T codes) in Part 2, every language that has two codes in Part 2 has one code in Part 1
- one code: en -> eng
- two codes (#~23): de <-> ger/deu
- Part 2 has reserved codes and three special codes
- qaa ... qtz, mul, und, zxx
- individual languages in Part 2 have a code in Part 3 and have one or no code in Part 1
- one code: eng -> eng -> en
- no code: ast -> ast -> (empty)
- collective codes in Part 2 have a code in Part 5
- cover different languages: afa != afa
- cover same languages: aus = aus
- one collective code in Part 2 has a code in Part 1
- bih -> bh
- some codes in Part 5 have no code in Part 2
- sqj
- some codes (#~56) in Part 3 are macrolanguages, they may have
- no Part 2 code but a Part 1 codes and their containing languages have codes in Part 2 and Part 1 (#1): hbs <-> sh (deprecated) ; bos, hrv/scr, srp/scc -> bs, hr, sr
- a Part 2 code and a Part 1 code(#1), while their containing languages also have codes in Part 1 and Part 2: nor -> nor -> no ; non, nob -> non, nob -> nn, nb
- no Part 1 code (#several):
- two Part 2 codes (B/T) (#4): fas, msa, sqi, zho -> per/fas, may/msa, alb/sqi, chi/zho
Alpha-2 code space
"Alpha-2" codes (for codes composed of 2 letters of the basic Latin alphabet) are used in ISO 639-1ISO 639-1
ISO 639-1:2002, Codes for the representation of names of languages — Part 1: Alpha-2 code, is the first part of the ISO 639 series of international standards for language codes. Part 1 covers the registration of two-letter codes. There are 136 two-letter codes registered...
. When codes for a wider range of languages were desired, more than 2 letter combinations could cover (a maximum of
), ISO 639-2ISO 639-2
ISO 639-2:1998, Codes for the representation of names of languages — Part 2: Alpha-3 code, is the second part of the ISO 639 standard, which lists codes for the representation of the names of languages. The three-letter codes given for each language in this part of the standard are referred to as...
was developed using Alpha-3 codes (though the latter was formally published first).
Alpha-3 code space
"Alpha-3" codes (for codes composed of 3 letters of the basic Latin alphabet) are used in ISO 639-2ISO 639-2
ISO 639-2:1998, Codes for the representation of names of languages — Part 2: Alpha-3 code, is the second part of the ISO 639 standard, which lists codes for the representation of the names of languages. The three-letter codes given for each language in this part of the standard are referred to as...
, ISO 639-3
ISO 639-3
ISO 639-3:2007, Codes for the representation of names of languages — Part 3: Alpha-3 code for comprehensive coverage of languages, is an international standard for language codes in the ISO 639 series. The standard describes three‐letter codes for identifying languages. It extends the ISO 639-2...
, and ISO 639-5
ISO 639-5
ISO 639-5:2008 "Codes for the representation of names of languages—Part 5: Alpha-3 code for language families and groups" is an international standard published by the International Organization for Standardization . It was developed by ISO Technical Committee 37, Subcommittee 2, and first...
. Mathematically, the upper limit for the number of languages and language collections that can be so represented is
.The common use of Alpha-3 codes by three parts of ISO 639 requires some coordination within a larger system.
Part 2 defines four special codes
mul, und, mis, zxx, a reserved range qaa-qtz (20 × 26 = 520 codes) and has 23 double entries (the B/T codes). This sums up to 520 + 23 + 4 = 547 codes that cannot be used in part 3 to represent languages or in part 5 to represent language families or groups.The remainder is 17,576 – 547 = 17,029.
There are somewhere around six or seven thousand languages on Earth today. So those 17,029 codes are adequate to assign a unique code to each language, although some languages may end up with arbitrary codes that sound nothing like the traditional name(s) of that language.
Alpha-4 code space
"Alpha-4" codes (for codes composed of 4 letters of the basic Latin alphabet) is proposed to be used in ISO 639-6ISO 639-6
ISO 639-6, Codes for the representation of names of languages — Part 6: Alpha-4 code for comprehensive coverage of language variants, is an international standard in the ISO 639 series, developed by...
. The upper limit for the number of languages and dialects that can be represented is
.See also
- IETF language tags (based on ISO 639)
- ISO 3166ISO 3166ISO 3166 is a standard published by the International Organization for Standardization . It defines codes for the names of countries, dependent territories, special areas of geographical interest, and their principal subdivisions . The official name of the standard is Codes for the representation...
(codes for countries) - ISO 15924ISO 15924ISO 15924, Codes for the representation of names of scripts, defines two sets of codes for a number of writing systems . Each script is given both a four-letter code and a numeric one....
(codes for writing systemWriting systemA writing system is a symbolic system used to represent elements or statements expressible in language.-General properties:Writing systems are distinguished from other possible symbolic communication systems in that the reader must usually understand something of the associated spoken language to...
s) - ISO, SIL, and BCP language codes for constructed languagesISO, SIL, and BCP language codes for constructed languagesThis is a list of ISO 639 codes and BCP 47 language tags for individual constructed languages, complete as of November 2009.ISO 639-2 also has the code art for other artificial languages...
- language codeLanguage codeA language code is a code that assigns letters and/or numbers as identifiers or classifiers for languages. These codes may be used to organize library collections or presentations of data, to choose the correct localizations and translations in computing, and as a shorthand designation for longer...
- language families and languages
- list of languages
- list of official languages
External links
- ISO 639-1:2002
- Official ISO 639 list
- ISO 639-2 Registration Authority
- ISO 639-3 Registration Authority
- Common Locale Data Repository which contains translations of ISO 639 codes in other languages in an XML format. The CLDR survey tool also contains a more readable format of the data.
- ISO 639 and the Ethnologue
- ISO 639 Registration Authority Report, 2004–2005
- ISO 639-2/RA Codes for the Representation of Names of Languages, US Library of Congress