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: the 2009 series change requests now in formal review period

Change requests for 2009 are now under formal review for a three month period, until 15 December 2009. New requests submitted after September 1 will be a part of the 2010 series. The Registration Authority would like to receive comments from all interested parties regarding the candidate change requests, which may be viewed here. Click the "more..." link at the right of any line for the details of that request. Please include the change request number in the subject line of your comment, emailed to .

All past change request documentation is retained permanently on this website. A past change request may be found through its change request number, as in http://www.sil.org/iso639-3/chg_detail.asp?id=2006-001 or through the documentation page of an affected code element, as in http://www.sil.org/iso639-3/documentation.asp?id=bvs. See also information about code set management and the change process. This page includes links to summary reports for all past series of change requests.

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 7400, ext. 2293
FAX: +1 972 708 7546