List of ISO language codes

Why do ISO language codes exist?

ISO 639-1 is an international standard for identifying languages using two-letter codes, ensuring consistency across software, databases, and global communication. It simplifies multilingual content management, localization, and digital applications.

Below is a table listing various languages along with their corresponding ISO 639-1 or ISO 639-3 codes.

While ISO 639-1 covers the most widely spoken languages, IETF Language Tags (BCP 47)—developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)—allow for more specific language variations by adding:

Region (e.g., en-US for American English, en-GB for British English)
Script (e.g., sr-Cyrl for Serbian in Cyrillic, sr-Latn for Latin)
Variants for dialects or orthographies

ISO 639-3 - three-letter codes for specific dialects and minority languages- covers all known languages, including regional dialects and indigenous languages.

Language	ISO Code	Language	ISO Code	Language	ISO Code
Acehnese	ace	Afrikaans	af	Akan	ak
Albanian	sq	Amharic	am	Arabic	ar
Armenian	hy	Assamese	as	Asturian	ast
Awadhi	awa	Ayacucho Quechua	quy	Aymara, Central	ayr
Azerbaijani	az	Azerbaijani, Northern	azj	Azerbaijani, Southern	azb
Balinese	ban	Bambara	bm	Banjar	bjn
Bashkir	ba	Belarusian	be	Bemba	bem
Bengali	bn	Bhojpuri	bho	Bosnian	bs
Buginese	bug	Bulgarian	bg	Catalan	ca
Cebuano	ceb	Chhattisgarhi	hne	Chinese (Simplified)	zh-CN
Chinese (Traditional)	zh-TW	Chokwe	cjk	Crimean Tatar	crh
Croatian	hr	Czech	cs	Danish	da
Dari	prs	Dimli	diq	Dinka, Southwestern	dik
Dutch	nl	Dyula	dyu	Dzongkha	dz
English	en	Esperanto	eo	Estonian	et
Ewe	ee	Faroese	fo	Fijian	fj
Finnish	fi	Fon	fon	French	fr
Friulian	fur	Galician	gl	Ganda	lg
Georgian	ka	German	de	Greek	el
Guarani	gn	Gujarati	gu	Haitian	ht
Halh Mongolian	khk	Hausa	ha	Hebrew	he
Hindi	hi	Hungarian	hu	Icelandic	is
Igbo	ig	Iloko	ilo	Indonesian	id
Irish	ga	Italian	it	Japanese	ja
Javanese	jv	Jingpho	kac	Kabiyè	kbp
Kabuverdianu	kea	Kabyle	kab	Kamba	kam
Kannada	kn	Kanuri, Central (Latin)	knc	Kashmiri (Arabic script)	kas
Kashmiri (Devanagari)	ks	Kazakh	kk	Khmer	km
Kikuyu	ki	Kimbundu	kmb	Kinyarwanda	rw
Kongo	kg	Korean	ko	Kurdish, Central	ckb
Kurdish, Northern	kmr	Kyrgyz	ky	Lao	lo
Latgalian	ltg	Latin	la	Latvian	lv
Ligurian	lij	Limburgish	li	Lingala	ln
Lithuanian	lt	Lombard	lmo	Luba-Kasai	lua
Luo	luo	Luxembourgish	lb	Macedonian	mk
Magahi	mag	Maithili	mai	Malagasy	mg
Malay	ms	Malayalam	ml	Maltese	mt
Manipuri	mni	Maori	mi	Marathi	mr
Minangkabau	min	Mizo	lus	Mongolian (Traditional)	mn
Mossi	mos	Myanmar (Burmese)	my	Nepali	ne
Nigerian Fulfulde	fuv	Norwegian (Bokmål)	nb	Norwegian (Nynorsk)	nn
Nuer	nus	Nyanja	ny	Occitan	oc
Odia (Oriya)	or	Oromo, West Central	gaz	Pangasinan	pag
Papiamento	pap	Pashto, Southern	pbt	Pashto	ps
Persian, Western	pes	Plateau Malagasy	plt	Polish	pl
Portuguese (Brazil)	pt-BR	Portuguese (Portugal)	pt-PT	Punjabi	pa
Romanian	ro	Rundi	rn	Russian	ru
Samoan	sm	Sango	sg	Sanskrit	sa
Santali	sat	Sardinian	sc	Scots Gaelic	gd
Serbian (Cyrillic)	sr-Cyrl	Serbian (Latin)	sr-Latn	Shan	shn
Shona	sn	Sicilian	scn	Silesian	szl
Sindhi	sd	Sinhala	si	Slovak	sk
Slovenian	sl	Somali	so	Sotho, Northern	nso
Sotho, Southern	st	Spanish	es-ES	Spanish (Latin America)	es-419
Sundanese	su	Swahili	sw	Swati	ss
Swedish	sv	Tagalog	tl	Tajik	tg
Tamasheq	taq	Tamazight, Central Atlas	tzm	Tamil	ta
Tatar	tt	Telugu	te	Thai	th
Tibetan	bo	Tigrinya	ti	Tok Pisin	tpi
Tosk Albanian	als	Tsonga	ts	Tswana	tn
Tumbuka	tum	Turkish	tr	Turkmen	tk
Twi	tw	Ukrainian	uk	Umbundu	umb
Urdu	ur	Uyghur	ug	Uzbek, Northern	uzn
Venetian	vec	Vietnamese	vi	Waray (Philippines)	war
Welsh	cy	Wolof	wo	Xhosa	xh
Yiddish, Eastern	ydd	Yoruba	yo	Zulu	zu

To know which languages are currently supported by Lara, please check this link.

This article is about:

ISO 639-1 and ISO 639-3 language codes and their differences.
Why multiple ISO standards are necessary for language identification.
How IETF Language Tags (BCP 47) enhance language specificity.
The role of ISO standards in localization, digital communication, and multilingual content management.