Standards

Many of the pages on this site will reference different standards. Below we list links to the various standards mentioned.

Encoding

ISO/IEC 10646 specifies the Universal Coded Character Set (UCS). It is intended to have the exact repertoire as is in The Unicode Standard.

The Unicode Standard — the standards body for the internationalization of software and services.

ISO/IEC TR 15285 — information on glyphs and their relationship to characters.

Languages

ISO 639 — Code for individual languages and language groups.

ISO 639-3 — ISO 639 gives comprehensive provisions for the identification and assignment of language identifiers to individual languages, and for the creation of new language code elements or for the modification of existing ones.

Ethnologue — a catalog of every known living language still in use today. With Ethnologue, you’re guaranteed to get the latest, most complete list of languages as recognized by the ISO 639-3 standard.

ROLV (Registry Of Language Varieties) — This registry defines standardized codes used for identifying the language varieties (sometimes called dialects) of the world.

Scripts

ISO 15924 — ISO has appointed the Unicode Consortium as the Registration Authority for International Standard, Codes for the representation of names of scripts. These script codes are used in language tagging.

Regions

ISO 3166 — two-letter country codes are used in making a language tag.

ISO 3166-1 Numeric — three-digit region codes are sometimes used when a country code is insufficient.

Writing system support

BCP 47 / IANA Language Subtag Registry — A BCP 47 tag is a standard way of referencing a language, used widely in the computer industry. The tag structure has been standardized by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) in Best Current Practice (BCP) 47; the subtags are maintained by the IANA Language Subtag Registry.

OpenType Layout Tag Registry — OpenType Layout tag registry for Script tags, Language tags, Feature tags, and Baseline tags.

CLDR (Unicode Common Locale Data Repository) — provides key building blocks for software to support the world’s languages, with the largest and most extensive standard repository of locale data available.