ISO 639-1

ISO 639-1 is the first part of the ISO 639 international-standard language-code family. It consists of 136 two-letter codes used to identify the world's major languages. These codes are a useful international shorthand for indicating languages. For example:English is represented by enGerman is represented by de (from the endonym Deutsch)Japanese is represented by ja (even though its endonym is Nihongo)
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ISO 639 is the set of international standards that lists short codes for language names. ISO 639 consists of different parts, of which two parts have been approved and a third part that is in the final approval (FDIS) stage. The other parts are works in progress.ISO 639-1: 2002 Codes for the representation of names of languages -- Part 1: Alpha-2 code List of ISO 639-1 codesISO 639-2: 1998 Codes for the representation of names of languages -- Part 2: Alpha-3 code List of ISO 639-2 codesISO 639-3: 2007 Codes for the representation of names of languages -- Part 3: Alpha-3 code for comprehensive coverage of languages List of ISO 639-3 codesISO/CD 639-4: 2007? Codes for the representation of names of languages -- Part 4: Implementation guidelines and general principles for language codingISO/DIS 639-5: 2007? Codes for the representation of names of languages -- Part 5: Alpha-3 code for language families and groupsISO/CD 639-6: 2007? Codes for the representation of names of languages -- Part 6: Alpha-4 representation for comprehensive coverage of language variation
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