ISO 639-2 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 "Alpha-3" codes. There are 464 language codes in the list. The U.S. Library of Congress is the registration authority for ISO 639-2 (referred to as ISO 639-2/RA). As registration authority, the LOC receives and reviews proposed changes; they also have representation on the ISO 639-RA Joint Advisory Committee responsible for maintaining the ISO 639 code tables. Work was begun on the ISO 639-2 standard in 1989, due to the fact that the ISO 639-1 standard, which gives two-letter codes for languages, would not be able to accommodate a sufficient number of languages. The ISO 639-2 standard was first released in 1998. While most languages are given one code by the standard, twenty-two of the languages described have two three-letter codes, a "bibliographic" code (ISO 639-2/B), which is derived from the English name for the language and was a necessary legacy feature, and a "terminological" code (ISO 639-2/T), which is derived from the native name for the language. Each of these twenty-two languages are also included in the ISO 639-1 standard. In addition, there are codes for special situations:
- mis is listed as "uncoded languages"
- mul (for multiple languages) is applied when several languages are used and it is not practical to specify all the appropriate language codes
- The interval from qaa to qtz is reserved and is not used in the standard
- und (for undetermined) is used in situations in which a language or languages must be indicated but the language cannot be identified.
- zxx is listed in the code list as "no linguistic content" (added 2006-01-11)
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Collective languages
Some ISO 639-2 codes that are commonly used for languages do not precisely represent a particular language or some related languages (as the above macrolanguages). They are regarded as collective languages (or collectives) and are excluded from ISO 639-3. For a definition of macrolanguages and collective languages see [1]. Collective languages and their ISO 639-2 codes are:
not obviously a collective in 639-2
- bad Banda
- bih Bihari (has an ISO 639-1 code)
- bik Bikol
- btk Batak
- day Dayak
- him Himachali
- ijo Ijo
- kar Karen
- kro Kru
- nah Nahuatl
- son Songhai
- znd Zande\
Bihari (bih) is marked as collective but on the other hand has an ISO 639-1 code (bh) which should only be for individual languages. The reason is that individual Bihari languages 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.
obviously intending to cover several languages
- art Artificial languages (Other)
- afa Afro-Asiatic (Other)
- tut Altaic (Other)
- map Austronesian (Other)
- bat Baltic (Other)
- bnt Bantu (Other)
- ber Berber (Other)
- cau Caucasian (Other)
- cai Central American Indian (Other)
- crp Creoles and Pidgins (Other)
- cpe Creoles and Pidgins, English-based (Other)
- cpf Creoles and Pidgins, French-based (Other)
- cpp Creoles and Pidgins, Portuguese-based (Other)
- cus Cushitic (Other)
- dra Dravidian (Other)
- fiu Finno-Ugrian (Other)
- gem Germanic (Other)
- inc Indic (Other)
- ine Indo-European (Other)
- ira Iranian (Other)
- khi Khoisan (Other)
- mkh Mon-Khmer (Other)
- nic Niger-Kordofanian (Other)
- ssa Nilo-Saharan (Other)
- nai North American Indian (Other)
- paa Papuan (Other)
- phi Philippine (Other)
- roa Romance (Other)
- sgn sign languages
- smi Sami languages (Other)
- sem Semitic (Other)
- sit Sino-Tibetan (Other)
- sla Slavic (Other)
- sai South American Indian (Other)
- tai Tai (Other)
B and T codes
If possible ISO 15924 derives their codes from ISO 639-2 and where there are two codes ISO 639-2/B is favored. ISO 639-3 uses ISO 639-2/T.
