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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) and is responsible for maintaining the standard and reviewing any proposed additions or changes. Work was begun on the ISO 693-2 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 693-2 standard was first released in 1998. While most languages are given one code by the standard, twenty-three 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-three languages are also included in the ISO 639-1 standard. In addition, there are codes for special situations:
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 *. Collective languages and their ISO 639-2 codes are: not obviously a collective in 639-2 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 obviously intending to cover several languages Note also: B and T codes If possible ISO 15924 derives their codes from ISO 639-2 and where there are two codes the B code is favored. ISO 639-3 uses the T codes. See also | ||||||||
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