Languages

As noted on the page Wikipedia:Languages:

Language is a structured system of communication that consists of grammar and vocabulary. It is the primary means by which humans convey meaning, both in spoken and written forms, and may also be conveyed through sign languages. The vast majority of human languages have developed writing systems that allow for the recording and preservation of the sounds or signs of language. Human language is characterized by its cultural and historical diversity, with significant variations observed between cultures and across time. Human languages possess the properties of productivity and displacement, which enable the creation of an infinite number of sentences, and the ability to refer to objects, events, and ideas that are not immediately present in the discourse. The use of human language relies on social convention and is acquired through learning.

Estimates of the number of human languages in the world vary between 5,000 and 7,000. Precise estimates depend on an arbitrary distinction (dichotomy) established between languages and dialects. Natural languages are spoken, signed, or both; however, any language can be encoded into secondary media using auditory, visual, or tactile stimuli – for example, writing, whistling, signing, or braille. In other words, human language is modality-independent, but written or signed language is the way to inscribe or encode the natural human speech or gestures.

Language names and language codes

This page has been copied from the Wikipedia page Wikipedia:List_of_ISO_639-1_codes on 27 April 2023. Some minor changes have been made to fit the style of this wiki, in particular to ensure that language names are distinct from country names and that entry of language names does not require any accented characters to be used.

ISO language name	639-1	639-2/T	639-2/B	Notes
Abkhazian	ab	abk	abk	also known as Abkhaz
Afar	aa	aar	aar
Afrikaans	af	afr	afr
Akan	ak	aka	aka	macrolanguage, Twi is tw/twi, Fanti is fat
Albanian	sq	sqi	alb	macrolanguage, called "Albanian Phylozone" in 639-6
Amharic	am	amh	amh
Arabic	ar	ara	ara	macrolanguage, Standard Arabic is arb
Aragonese	an	arg	arg
Armenian	hy	hye	arm	ISO 639-3 code hye is for Eastern Armenian, hyw is for Western Armenian, and xcl is for Classical Armenian
Assamese	as	asm	asm
Avaric	av	ava	ava	also known as Avar
Avestan	ae	ave	ave	ancient
Aymara	ay	aym	aym	macrolanguage
Azerbaijani	az	aze	aze	macrolanguage, also known as Azeri
Bambara	bm	bam	bam
Bashkir	ba	bak	bak
Basque	eu	eus	baq
Belarusian	be	bel	bel
Bengali	bn	ben	ben	also known as Bangla
Bislama	bi	bis	bis	Language formed from English and Vanuatuan languages, with some French influence.
Bosnian	bs	bos	bos
Breton	br	bre	bre
Bulgarian	bg	bul	bul
Burmese	my	mya	bur	also known as Myanmar
Catalan (Valencian)	ca	cat	cat
Central Khmer	km	khm	khm	also known as Khmer or Cambodian
Chamorro	ch	cha	cha
Chechen	ce	che	che
Chichewa (Chewa, Nyanja)	ny	nya	nya
Chinese	zh	zho	chi	macrolanguage
Church Slavonic (Old Slavonic, Old Church Slavonic)	cu	chu	chu	ancient, in use by the Eastern Orthodox Church
Chuvash	cv	chv	chv
Cornish	kw	cor	cor
Corsican	co	cos	cos
Cree	cr	cre	cre	macrolanguage
Croatian	hr	hrv	hrv
Czech	cs	ces	cze
Danish	da	dan	dan
Divehi (Dhivehi, Maldivian)	dv	div	div
Dutch (and Flemish)	nl	nld	dut	Flemish is not to be confused with the closely related West Flemish which is referred to as Vlaams (Dutch for "Flemish") in ISO 639-3 and has the ISO 639-3 code vls
Dzongkha	dz	dzo	dzo
English	en	eng	eng
Esperanto	eo	epo	epo	constructed, initially by L.L. Zamenhof in 1887
Estonian	et	est	est	macrolanguage
Ewe	ee	ewe	ewe
Faroese	fo	fao	fao
Fijian	fj	fij	fij
Finnish	fi	fin	fin
French	fr	fra	fre
Fulah	ff	ful	ful	macrolanguage, also known as Fula
Gaelic (and Scottish Gaelic)	gd	gla	gla
Galician	gl	glg	glg
Ganda	lg	lug	lug
Georgian	ka	kat	geo
German	de	deu	ger
Greek [from 1453 CE]	el	ell	gre	i.e. Modern Greek; for Ancient Greek, use the ISO 639-3 code grc
Guarani	gn	grn	grn	macrolanguage
Gujarati	gu	guj	guj
Haitian (Haitian Creole)	ht	hat	hat
Hausa	ha	hau	hau
Hebrew	he	heb	heb	Modern Hebrew. Code changed in 1989 from original ISO 639:1988, iw.
Herero	hz	her	her
Hindi	hi	hin	hin
Hiri Motu	ho	hmo	hmo
Hungarian	hu	hun	hun
Icelandic	is	isl	ice
Ido	io	ido	ido	constructed by De Beaufront, 1907, as variation of Esperanto
Igbo	ig	ibo	ibo
Indonesian	id	ind	ind	covered by macrolanguage ms/msa. Changed in 1989 from original ISO 639:1988, in.
Interlingua	ia	ina	ina	constructed by the International Auxiliary Language Association
Interlingue	ie	ile	ile	constructed by Edgar de Wahl, first published in 1922
Inuktitut	iu	iku	iku	macrolanguage
Inupiaq	ik	ipk	ipk	macrolanguage
Irish	ga	gle	gle
Italian	it	ita	ita
Japanese	ja	jpn	jpn
Javanese	jv	jav	jav
Kalaallisut (Greenlandic)	kl	kal	kal
Kannada	kn	kan	kan
Kanuri	kr	kau	kau	macrolanguage
Kashmiri	ks	kas	kas
Kazakh	kk	kaz	kaz
Kikuyu (Gikuyu)	ki	kik	kik
Kinyarwanda	rw	kin	kin
Kirghiz (Kyrgyz)	ky	kir	kir
Komi	kv	kom	kom	macrolanguage
Kongo	kg	kon	kon	macrolanguage
Korean	ko	kor	kor
Kuanyama (Kwanyama)	kj	kua	kua
Kurdish	ku	kur	kur	macrolanguage
Lao	lo	lao	lao
Latin	la	lat	lat	ancient
Latvian	lv	lav	lav	macrolanguage
Limburgan (Limburger, Limburgish)	li	lim	lim
Lingala	ln	lin	lin
Lithuanian	lt	lit	lit
Luba-Katanga	lu	lub	lub	also known as Luba-Shaba
Luxembourgish (Letzeburgesch)	lb	ltz	ltz
Macedonian	mk	mkd	mac
Malagasy	mg	mlg	mlg	macrolanguage
Malay	ms	msa	may	macrolanguage, Standard Malay is zsm, Indonesian is id/ind
Malayalam	ml	mal	mal
Maltese	mt	mlt	mlt
Manx	gv	glv	glv
Maori	mi	mri	mao	also known as Māori
Marathi	mr	mar	mar	also known as Marāṭhī
Marshallese	mh	mah	mah
Mongolian	mn	mon	mon	macrolanguage
Nauru	na	nau	nau	also known as Nauruan
Navajo (Navaho)	nv	nav	nav
Ndonga	ng	ndo	ndo
Nepali	ne	nep	nep	macrolanguage
North Ndebele	nd	nde	nde	also known as Northern Ndebele
Northern Sami	se	sme	sme
Norwegian	no	nor	nor	macrolanguage, Bokmål is nb/nob, Nynorsk is nn/nno
Norwegian Bokmal (Bokmål)	nb	nob	nob	covered by macrolanguage no/nor - this wiki prefers Bokmal
Norwegian Nynorsk	nn	nno	nno	covered by macrolanguage no/nor
Occitan	oc	oci	oci
Ojibwa	oj	oji	oji	macrolanguage, also known as Ojibwe
Oriya	or	ori	ori	macrolanguage, also known as Odia
Oromo	om	orm	orm	macrolanguage
Ossetian (Ossetic)	os	oss	oss
Pali	pi	pli	pli	ancient, also known as Pāli
Pashto (Pushto)	ps	pus	pus	macrolanguage
Farsi (Persian)	fa	fas	per	Persian macrolanguage, also known as Farsi - preferred by this wiki
Polish	pl	pol	pol
Portuguese	pt	por	por
Punjabi (Panjabi)	pa	pan	pan
Quechua	qu	que	que	macrolanguage
Romanian (and Moldavian, Moldovan)	ro	ron	rum	the identifiers mo and mol for Moldavian are deprecated. They will not be assigned to different items, and recordings using these identifiers will not be invalid.
Romansh	rm	roh	roh
Rundi	rn	run	run	also known as Kirundi
Russian	ru	rus	rus
Samoan	sm	smo	smo
Sango	sg	sag	sag
Sanskrit	sa	san	san	ancient
Sardinian	sc	srd	srd	macrolanguage
Serbian	sr	srp	srp	the ISO 639-2/T code srp deprecated the ISO 639-2/B code scc
Shona	sn	sna	sna
Sichuan Yi (Nuosu)	ii	iii	iii	standard form of the Yi languages
Sindhi	sd	snd	snd
Sinhala (Sinhalese)	si	sin	sin
Slovak	sk	slk	slo
Slovenian	sl	slv	slv	also known as Slovene
Somali	so	som	som
South Ndebele	nr	nbl	nbl	also known as Southern Ndebele
Southern Sotho	st	sot	sot
Spanish [Castilian version]	es	spa	spa
Sundanese	su	sun	sun
Swahili	sw	swa	swa	macrolanguage
Swati	ss	ssw	ssw	also known as Swazi
Swedish	sv	swe	swe
Tagalog	tl	tgl	tgl	note: Filipino (Pilipino) has the code fil
Tahitian	ty	tah	tah	one of the Reo Mā`ohi (languages of French Polynesia)
Tajik	tg	tgk	tgk
Tamil	ta	tam	tam
Tatar	tt	tat	tat
Telugu	te	tel	tel
Thai	th	tha	tha
Tibetan	bo	bod	tib	also known as Standard Tibetan
Tigrinya	ti	tir	tir
Tongan (Tonga)	to	ton	ton	also known as Tongan - this wiki uses Tongan to avoid clash with the country name
Tsonga	ts	tso	tso
Tswana	tn	tsn	tsn
Turkish	tr	tur	tur
Turkmen	tk	tuk	tuk
Twi	tw	twi	twi	covered by macrolanguage ak/aka
Uighur (Uyghur)	ug	uig	uig
Ukrainian	uk	ukr	ukr
Urdu	ur	urd	urd
Uzbek	uz	uzb	uzb	macrolanguage
Venda	ve	ven	ven
Vietnamese	vi	vie	vie
Volapuk (Volapük)	vo	vol	vol	constructed - this wiki uses the name Volapuk to avoid accents
Walloon	wa	wln	wln
Welsh	cy	cym	wel
Western Frisian	fy	fry	fry	also known as Frisian
Wolof	wo	wol	wol
Xhosa	xh	xho	xho
Yiddish	yi	yid	yid	macrolanguage. Changed in 1989 from original ISO 639:1988, ji.
Yoruba	yo	yor	yor
Zhuang (Chuang)	za	zha	zha	macrolanguage
Zulu	zu	zul	zul

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