ISO 639-6, ''Codes for the representation of names of languages — Part 6: Alpha-4 code for comprehensive coverage of language variants'', was a proposed international standard in the
ISO 639
ISO 639 is a set of standards by the International Organization for Standardization that is concerned with representation of names for languages and language groups.
It was also the name of the original standard, approved in 1967 (as ''ISO 639/R ...
series, developed b
ISO/TC 37/SC 2(International Organization for Standardization, Technical Committee 37, Subcommittee 2: ''Terminographical and lexicographical working methods'' – later renamed to ''Terminology workflow and language coding''). It contained four-letter codes that denote variants of languages and language families. This allowed one to differentiate between, for example, historical (
glvx) versus revived (
rvmx)
Manx, while
ISO 639-3
ISO 639-3:2007, ''Codes for the representation of names of languages – Part 3: Alpha-3 code for comprehensive coverage of languages'', is an international standard for language codes in the ISO 639 series. It defines three-letter codes for ...
only includes
glv for Manx.
The data supporting ISO 639-6 was researched and compiled by the ISO's registration authority GeoLang. ISO 639-6 was published on 17November 2009, and withdrawn on 25November 2014 because of concerns about its usefulness and maintainability.
The database also links each language and family to its principal ancestor, allowing the user to follow the classification of various languages. For example, the codes and ancestry of
English is given below:
The database differentiated between different scripts used for the same language. For example, a number of different scripts were used in the
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman Empire, * ; is an archaic version. The definite article forms and were synonymous * and el, Оθωμανική Αυτοκρατορία, Othōmanikē Avtokratoria, label=none * info page on book at Martin Luther University) ...
and as a result the
Ottoman Turkish language
Ottoman Turkish ( ota, لِسانِ عُثمانى, Lisân-ı Osmânî, ; tr, Osmanlı Türkçesi) was the standardized register of the Turkish language used by the citizens of the Ottoman Empire (14th to 20th centuries CE). It borrowed exten ...
has been categorized as follows:
See also
*
List of ISO 639-6 codes
*
ISO 639-5
ISO 639-5:2008 "Codes for the representation of names of languages—Part 5: Alpha-3 code for language families and groups" is a highly incomplete international standard published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). It wa ...
: 3-letter codes for language families and groups ("remainder" groups from legacy ISO 639-2 were extended inclusively in ISO 639-5).
*
ISO 15924
ISO 15924, ''Codes for the representation of names of scripts'', is an international standard defining codes for writing systems or ''scripts'' (a "set of graphic characters used for the written form of one or more languages"). Each script is given ...
: 4-letter codes for the representation of names of scripts (most of them also used in BCP 47 as "script subtags").
*
IETF language tag
An IETF BCP 47 language tag is a standardized code or tag that is used to identify human languages in the Internet. The tag structure has been standardized by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) in ''Best Current Practice (BCP) 47''; the s ...
: 5-to-8-letter codes used as "variant subtags", assigned and maintained in the IANA database for BCP 47 language tags.
References
ISO 639
2009 introductions
Language identifiers
{{Lang-stub