ISO 639-3

ISO 639-3 is in process of development as an international standard for language codes. It extends the alpha-3 code in ISO 639-2 with an aim to cover all known languages. It is, therefore, a superset of ISO 639-1, and of the individual languages in ISO 639-2. (Part 2 also includes language collections, whereas Part 3 does not.)

The inventory of languages is based on two sources: modern languages are those used in the Ethnologue, and historic varieties, ancient languages and artificial languages are derived from the Linguist List.

The status of this project from January 2005 is that of Draft International Standard (DIS). The current draft is referred to as ISO/DIS 639-3.

External Links

• ISO/DIS 639-3
• History of the Ethnologue
• Three-letter codes for identifying languages