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, so 639-3 is not a superset of 639-2.

The draft from 2005-07-30 contains 7602 entries. The inventory of languages is based on three sources: the individual languages contained in 639-2 are the basis, this was extended by modern languages from the Ethnologue 15th edition, and by historic varieties, ancient languages and artificial languages 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.

Differences with ISO 639-2 codes

ISO 639-2(B/T)\	Language name\	ISO 639-3\	Language name
ara	Arabic	arb	Standard Arabic
chi/zho	Chinese	cmn	Mandarin
may/msa	Malay	mly	malay

See also

• ISO 639