ISO 639-3

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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 identifying languages. The standard was published by ISO on 2007-02-05.[1]

ISO 639-3 extends the ISO 639-2 alpha-3 codes with an aim to cover all known natural languages. The extended language coverage was based primarily on the language codes used in the Ethnologue (volumes 10-14) published by SIL International, which is now the registration authority for ISO 639-3.[2] It provides an enumeration of languages as complete as possible, including living and extinct, ancient and constructed, major and minor, written and unwritten.[1] However, it does not include reconstructed languages such as Proto-Indo-European.[3]

ISO 639-3 is intended for use in a wide range of applications. It is widely used in computer and information systems, such as the Internet, in which many languages need to be supported. The codes are also frequently used in the linguistic literature and elsewhere to compensate for the fact that language names may be obscure or ambiguous.

Because it provides comprehensive language coverage, giving equal opportunity for all languages, and because of its wide adoption in information technologies, ISO 639-3 provides an important technology component addressing the digital divide problem.

Language codes

ISO 639-3 includes all languages in ISO 639-1 and all individual languages in ISO 639-2. ISO 639-1 and ISO 639-2 focused on major languages, most frequently represented in the total body of the world's literature. Since ISO 639-2 also includes language collections and Part 3 does not, ISO 639-3 is not a superset of ISO 639-2. Where B and T codes exist in ISO 639-2, ISO 639-3 uses the T-codes.

Examples:

language639-1639-2 (B/T)639-3
type		639-3
code
Englishenengindividual eng
Germandeger/deuindividualdeu
Arabicararamacroara
individualarb + others
Chinesezhchi/zho[4][5]macrozho
Mandarinindividualcmn
Cantoneseindividualyue
Minnanindividualnan

As of April 2012, the standard contains 7776 entries.[6] The inventory of languages is based on a number of sources including: the individual languages contained in 639-2, modern languages from the Ethnologue, historic varieties, ancient languages and artificial languages from the Linguist List,[7] as well as languages recommended within the annual public commenting period.

Machine-readable data files are provided by the registration authority.[6] Mappings from ISO 639-1 or ISO 639-2 to ISO 639-3 can be done using these data files.

ISO 639-3 is intended to assume distinctions based on criteria that are not entirely subjective.[8] It is not intended to document or provide identifiers for dialects or other sub-language variations.[9] Nevertheless, judgments regarding distinctions between languages may be subjective, particularly in the case of oral language varieties without established literary traditions, usage in education or media, or other factors that contribute to language conventionalization.

Code space

Since the code is three-letter alphabetic, one upper bound for the number of languages that can be represented is 26 × 26 × 26 = 17576. Since ISO 639-2 defines special codes (4), a reserved range (520) and B-only codes (23), 547 codes cannot be used in part 3. Therefore a lower upper bound is 17576 − 547 = 17030.

The upper bound gets even lower if one subtracts the language collections defined in 639-2 and the ones yet to be defined in ISO 639-5.

Macrolanguages

Main article: ISO 639 macrolanguage

There are 56 languages in ISO 639-2 which are considered, for the purposes of the standard, to be "macrolanguages" in ISO 639-3.[10]

Some of these macrolanguages had no individual language as defined by ISO 639-3 in the code set of ISO 639-2, e.g. 'ara' (Generic Arabic). Others like 'nor' (Norwegian) had their two individual parts ('nno' (Nynorsk), 'nob' (Bokmål)) already in ISO 639-2.

That means some languages (e.g. 'arb', Standard Arabic) that were considered by ISO 639-2 to be dialects of one language ('ara') are now in ISO 639-3 in certain contexts considered to be individual languages themselves.

This is an attempt to deal with varieties that may be linguistically distinct from each other, but are treated by their speakers as two forms of the same language, e.g. in cases of diglossia.

For example:

See[11] for the complete list.

Collective languages

"A collective language code element is an identifier that represents a group of individual languages that are not deemed to be one language in any usage context."[12] These codes do not precisely represent a particular language or macrolanguage.

While ISO 639-2 includes three-letter identifiers for collective languages, these codes are excluded from ISO 639-3. Hence ISO 639-3 is not a superset of ISO 639-2.

ISO 639-5 defines 3-letter collective codes for language families and groups, including the collective language codes from ISO 639-2.

Special codes

Four codes are set aside in ISO 639-3 and ISO 639-3 for cases where none of the specific codes are appropriate. These are intended primarily for applications like databases where an ISO code is required regardless of whether one exists.

mis uncoded languages
mul multiple languages
und undetermined languages
zxx no linguistic content / not applicable

In addition, 520 codes in the range qaa–qtz are 'reserved for local use'. For example the Linguist List uses them for extinct languages. Linguist List has assigned one of them a generic value:

qnp unnamed proto-language (Linguist List only)

This is used for proposed intermediate nodes in a family tree that have no name.

Maintenance processes

The code table for ISO 639-3 is open to changes. In order to protect stability of existing usage, the changes permitted are limited to:[14]

Changes are made on an annual cycle. Every request is given a minimum period of three months for public review.

The ISO 639-3 Web site has pages that describe "scopes of denotation"[15] (languoid types) and types of languages,[16] which explain what concepts are in scope for encoding and certain criteria that need to be met. For example, constructed languages can be encoded, but only if they are designed for human communication and have a body of literature, preventing requests for idiosyncratic inventions.

The registration authority documents on its Web site instructions made in the text of the ISO 639-3 standard regarding how the code tables are to be maintained.[17] It also documents the processes used for receiving and processing change requests.[18]

A change request form is provided, and there is a second form for collecting information about proposed additions. Any party can submit change requests. When submitted, requests are initially reviewed by the registration authority for completeness.

When a fully documented request is received, it is added to a published Change Request Index. Also, announcements are sent to the general LINGUIST discussion list at Linguist List and other lists the registration authority may consider relevant, inviting public review and input on the requested change. Any list owner or individual is able to request notifications of change requests for particular regions or language families. Comments that are received are published for other parties to review. Based on consensus in comments received, a change request may be withdrawn or promoted to "candidate status".

Three months prior to the end of an annual review cycle (typically in September), an announcement is set to the LINGUIST discussion list and other lists regarding Candidate Status Change Requests. All requests remain open for review and comment through the end of the annual review cycle.

Decisions are announced at the end of the annual review cycle (typically in January). At that time, requests may be adopted in whole or in part, amended and carried forward into the next review cycle, or rejected. A public archive of every change request is maintained along with the decisions taken and the rationale for the decisions.[19]

Criticism

Linguists Morey, Post and Friedman raise various criticisms of ISO 639-3:[20]

Martin Haspelmath agrees with four of these points, but not the point about language change.[21] He disagrees because any account of a language requires identifying it, and we can easily identify different stages of a language. He suggests that linguists may prefer to use a codification that is made at the languoid level since “it rarely matters to linguists whether what they are talking about is a language, a dialect or a close-knit family of languages.” He also questions whether an ISO standard for language identification is appropriate since ISO is an industrial organization, while he views language documentation and nomenclature as a scientific endeavor. He cites the original need for standardized language identifiers as having been “the economic significance of translation and software localization,” for which purposes the ISO 639-1 and 639-2 standards were established. But he raises doubts about industry need for the comprehensive coverage provided by ISO 639-3, including as it does “little-known languages of small communities that are never or hardly used in writing and that are often in danger of extinction”.

Usage

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 "ISO 639-3 status and abstract". iso.org. 2010-07-20. Retrieved 2012-06-14.
  2. ↑ "Maintenance agencies and registration authorities". ISO.
  3. ↑ "Types of individual languages - Ancient languages". sil.org. Retrieved 2012-06-14.
  4. ↑ Ethnologue report for ISO 639 code: zho on ethnologue.com
  5. ↑ ISO639-3 on SIL.org
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 "ISO 639-3 Code Set". Sil.org. 2007-10-18. Retrieved 2012-06-14.
  7. ↑ "ISO 639-3". sil.org.
  8. ↑ "Scope of Denotation: Individual Languages". sil.org.
  9. ↑ "Scope of Denotation: Dialects". sil.org.
  10. ↑ "Scope of denotation: Macrolanguages". sil.org. Retrieved 2012-06-14.
  11. ↑ "Macrolanguage Mappings". sil.org. Retrieved 2012-06-14.
  12. ↑ "Scope of denotation: Collective languages". sil.org. Retrieved 2012-06-14.
  13. ↑ Field Recordings of Vervet Monkey Calls. Entry in the catalog of the Linguistic Data Consortium. Retrieved 2012-09-04.
  14. ↑ "Submitting ISO 639-3 Change Requests: Types of Changes". sil.org.
  15. ↑ "Scope of Denotation for Language Identifiers". sil.org.
  16. ↑ "Types of Languages". sil.org.
  17. ↑ "ISO 639-3 Change Management". sil.org.
  18. ↑ "Submitting ISO 639-3 Change Requests". sil.org.
  19. ↑ "ISO 639-3 Change Request Index". sil.org.
  20. ↑ Morey, Stephen; Post, Mark W.; Friedman, Victor A. (2013). The language codes of ISO 639: A premature, ultimately unobtainable, and possibly damaging standardization. PARADISEC RRR Conference.
  21. ↑ Martin Haspelmath, "Can language identity be standardized? On Morey et al.'s critique of ISO 639-3", Diversity Linguistics Comment, 2013/12/04
  22. ↑ http://www.language-archives.org/REC/language.html
  23. ↑ "Over 7,000 languages, just 1 Windows". Microsoft. 2014-02-05.
  24. ↑ http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Language_proposal_policy
  25. ↑ https://tools.ietf.org/html/bcp47
  26. ↑ http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/language
  27. ↑ http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/dom.html#the-lang-and-xml:lang-attributes
  28. ↑ http://www.loc.gov/standards/mods/v3/mods-userguide-elements.html
  29. ↑ http://www.tei-c.org/release/doc/tei-p5-doc/en/html/ref-language.html

Further reading

External links