Using language codes
Many markup and style sheet languages and protocols (HTML, CSS, XML, HTTP, and so on) use language tags in one way or another. Those language tags specify the language of the marked up or styled text.
There are two international standards for encoding languages: ISO 639-1 two-letter language codes and ISO 639-2 three-letter codes. When looking up the language tag to use on the web, neither should be used. The official registry of language tags that should be used instead of ISO codes is the IANA Language Subtag Registry.
The table below lists the language tags according to the IANA Language Subtag Registry:
| Code | Name |
|---|---|
aa | Afar |
ab | Abkhazian |
ae | Avestan |
af | Afrikaans |
ak | Akan |
am | Amharic |
an | Aragonese |
ar | Arabic |
as | Assamese |
av | Avaric |
| ... | ... |
zun | Zuni |
zuy | Zumaya |
zwa | Zay |
zyb | Yongbei Zhuang |
zyg | Yang Zhuang |
zyj | Youjiang Zhuang |
zyn | Yongnan Zhuang |
zyp | Zyphe Chin |
zza | Zaza, Dimili, Dimli (macrolanguage), Kirdki, Kirmanjki (macrolanguage), Zazaki |
zzj | Zuojiang Zhuang |
The following codes are declared special and reserved: mis, mul, qaa..qtz, und, zxx. Excluding those, there are 8,172 language codes in total defined by the IANA Language Subtag Registry.