Information AboutIso 639 |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT ISO 639 | |
| iso standards | |
| #00639 | |
| iso 639 | |
| identifiers | |
| universal identifiersiso standards | |
| #00639 | |
| iso 639 | |
| identifiers | |
| universal identifiers | |
| iso standards | |
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ISO 639 consists of different parts, of which two parts have been approved and a third part that is in the final approval (FDIS) stage. The other parts are works in progress.
USE OF ISO-639 CODES The language codes defined in the several sections of ISO-639 are used for bibliographic purposes and, in computing and internet environments, as a key element of Locale data. The codes also find use in various applications, such as Wikipedia URL s for its different language editions. ALPHA-2 CODE SPACE "Alpha-2" codes (for codes composed of 2 letters of the Basic Latin Alphabet ) are used in ISO 639-1 . Thus, there are distinct Alpha-2 codes. This is clearly insufficient to cover all languages, which led to the creation of ISO 639-2 and the use of Alpha-3 codes. ALPHA-3 CODE SPACE "Alpha-3" codes (for codes composed of 3 letters of the Basic Latin Alphabet ) are used in ISO 639-2 and ISO 639-3 and will eventually be used in ISO 639-5 . Mathematically, the upper limit for the number of languages and language collections that can be so represented is . The common use of Alpha-3 codes by three parts of ISO 639 requires some coordination within a larger system. Part 2 defines four special codes mul, und, mis, zxx, a reserved range qaa-qtz (20 × 26 = 520 codes) and has 23 double entries (the B/T codes). This sums up to 520 + 23 + 4 = 547 codes that cannot be used in part 3 to represent languages or in part 5 to represent language families or groups.The remainder is 17,576 – 547 = 17,029. There are somewhere around six or seven thousand languages on Earth today {Link without Title} {Link without Title} . So those 17,029 codes are adequate to assign a unique code to each language, although some languages may end up with arbitrary codes that sound nothing like traditional name(s) of that language. ALPHA-4 CODE SPACE "Alpha-4" codes (for codes composed of 4 letters of the Basic Latin Alphabet ) is proposed to be used in ISO 639-6. Mathematically, the upper limit for the number of languages and dialects that can be so represented is . SEE ALSO
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