ISO 639-3

This is the home page for Part 3 of the ISO 639 family of standards, Codes for the representation of names of languages. ISO 639-3 attempts to provide as complete an enumeration of languages as possible, including living, extinct, ancient, and constructed languages, whether major or minor, written or unwritten.

Announcement: Closing of 2012 series change requests

The 2012 series change requests are now being processed. Please submit your change requests by August 31, 2012 for inclusion in this year’s change request review cycle. All processed change requests will be posted by September 15, 2012 for comments.

Please note: SIL International is preparing a major change and upgrade of their website. Because of this, the iso639-3 site may not be available during the last week of August or in early September. Please be sure that you have needed forms for any changes before this time. The email address of the registrar () will be available throughout this period.

You are invited to submit a comment on any change request, either in support of or in opposition to its proposed changes (as a whole or as individual changes). The link to do this appears at the bottom of the change request detail page.

ISO 639-3 is a code that aims to define three-letter identifiers for all known human languages. At the core of ISO 639-3 are the individual languages already accounted for in ISO 639-2. The large number of living languages in the initial inventory of ISO 639-3 beyond those already included in ISO 639-2 was derived primarily from Ethnologue (15th edition). Additional extinct, ancient, historic, and constructed languages have been obtained from Linguist List.

SIL International has been designated as the ISO 639-3/RA for the purpose of processing requests for alpha-3 language codes comprising the International Standard, Codes for the representation of names of languages - Part 3: Alpha-3 code for comprehensive coverage of languages. The ISO 639-3/RA receives and reviews applications for requesting new language codes and for the change of existing ones according to criteria indicated in the standard. It maintains an accurate list of information associated with registered language codes which can be viewed on or downloaded from this website, and processes updates of registered language codes. Notification of pending and adopted updates are also distributed on a regular basis to subscribers and other parties.

This is the official site of the ISO 639-3 Registration Authority and thus is the only one authorized by ISO. If you have questions concerning ISO 639-3 please contact us at:

SIL International
ISO 639-3 Registrar
7500 W. Camp Wisdom Rd.
Dallas, TX 75236

E-mail:
Phone: +1 972 708 7575