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 ISO 639 is a international standard, standard by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) concerned with representation of languages and language groups. It currently consists of four sets (1-3, 5) of code, named after each part w ...

series of international standards for

language code A language code is a code that assigns letters 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 comput ...

s. Part 1 covers the registration of "set 1" two-letter codes. There are 183 two-letter codes registered as of June 2021. The registered codes cover the world's major languages. Some languages do not have the ISO 639-1 codes because the standard was initially designed to represent major and primary national languages with well-established terminologies and lexicography. The ISO 639-1 is more restrictive than other ISO 639 standards, such as ISO 639-2 as well as ISO 639-3, which cover a wider range of languages and variations. These codes are a useful international and formal shorthand for indicating languages. Many multilingual websites use these codes to prefix URLs of specific language versions of their websites, for example, "ua." before the website name is the Ukrainian version of that website. See also

IETF language tag An IETF BCP 47 language tag is a standardized code that is used to identify human languages on the Internet. The tag structure has been standardized by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) in ''Best Current Practice (BCP) 47''; the subtags ...

. (Two-letter country-specific top-level-domain code suffixes are often different from these language-tag prefixes.) ISO 639, the original standard for language codes, was approved in 1967. It was split into parts, and in 2002 ISO 639-1 became the new revision of the original standard. The last code added was ht, representing

Haitian Creole Haitian Creole (; , ; , ), or simply Creole (), is a French-based creole languages, French-based creole language spoken by 10 to 12million people worldwide, and is one of the two official languages of Haiti (the other being French), where it ...

on 2003-02-26. The use of the standard was encouraged by

s, introduced in RFC 1766 in March 1995, and continued by RFC 3066 from January 2001 and RFC 4646 from September 2006. The current version i
RFC 5646
from September 2009.

Infoterm The International Information Centre for Terminology (Infoterm) was founded in 1971 by UNESCO. Its goal is "to support and co-ordinate international co-operation in the field of terminology."

(International Information Center for Terminology) is the registration authority for ISO 639-1 codes. New ISO 639-1 codes are not added if an

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 International standard, standard, which lists Language code, codes for the representation of the names of languages ...

"set 2" three-letter code exists, so systems that use ISO 639-1 and 639-2 codes, with 639-1 codes preferred, do not have to change existing codes.ISO 639 Joint Advisory Committee - Working principles for ISO 639 maintenance
/ref> If an ISO 639-2 code that covers a group of languages is used, it might be overridden for some specific languages by a new ISO 639-1 code. Part 3 (2007) of the standard,

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. It defines three-letter codes for ...

, aiming to cover all known

natural language A natural language or ordinary language is a language that occurs naturally in a human community by a process of use, repetition, and change. It can take different forms, typically either a spoken language or a sign language. Natural languages ...

s, largely supersedes the

three-letter code standard. There is no specification on treatment of macrolanguages (see

References

External links

ISO 639

ISO 639-1/RA

{{DEFAULTSORT:Iso 639-1 ISO 639 Language identifiers