Collective Codes
ISO 639-5 defines alpha-3 (3-letter) codes, called "collective codes," that identify language families and groups. As of August 29, 2008 update to ISO 639-5, the standard defined 114 collective codes. The United States Library of Congress maintains the list of Alpha-3 codes that comprise ISO 639-5.
The standard does not cover all language families used by linguists. The languages covered by a group code need not be linguistically related, but may have a geographic relation, or category relation (such as Creoles).
The only site which has a complete list of codes for all language families and groups is the Multitree Site The MultiTree Project, run by the LINGUIST list The LINGUIST List. But these codes are not part of the ISO system, and use four (not three) letters. Since they are clearly distinct from language codes, some sites prefer them, though they are not a standard.
Read more about this topic: ISO 639-5
Famous quotes containing the words collective and/or codes:
“Anyone who is kind to man knows the fragmentariness of most men, and wants to arrange a society of power in which men fall naturally into a collective wholeness, since they cannot have an individual wholeness. In this collective wholeness they will be fulfilled. But if they make efforts at individual fulfilment, they must fail for they are by nature fragmentary.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“We must trust infinitely to the beneficent necessity which shines through all laws. Human nature expresses itself in them as characteristically as in statues, or songs, or railroads, and an abstract of the codes of nations would be an abstract of the common conscience.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)