Language Codes according to ISO 639-1
ISO 639-1 defines abbreviations for languages, consisting of two
lowercase letters. In HTML these are used in the LANG attribute as well.
You find tables sorted by language and by Code .
See Usage below for how to use these codes.
Also see the 639-2 Codes for the Representation of Names of Languages.
Down to sorting by Codes
| Language | ISO |
|---|
| (Afan) Oromo | om |
| Abkhazian | ab |
| Afar | aa |
| Afrikaans | af |
| Albanian | sq |
| Amharic | am |
| Arabic | ar |
| Armenian | hy |
| Assamese | as |
| Aymara | ay |
| Azerbaijani | az |
| Bashkir | ba |
| Basque | eu |
| Bengali | bn |
| Bhutani | dz |
| Bihari | bh |
| Bislama | bi |
| Breton | br |
| Bulgarian | bg |
| Burmese | my |
| Byelorussian | be |
| Cambodian | km |
| Catalan | ca |
| Chinese | zh |
| Corsican | co |
| Croatian | hr |
| Czech | cs |
| Danish | da |
| Dutch | nl |
| English | en |
| Esperanto | eo |
| Estonian | et |
| Faeroese | fo |
| Fiji | fj |
| Finnish | fi |
| French | fr |
| Frisian | fy |
| Galician | gl |
| Georgian | ka |
| German | de |
| Greek | el |
| Greenlandic | kl |
| Guarani | gn |
| Gujarati | gu |
| Hausa | ha |
| Hebrew (former iw) | he |
| Hindi | hi |
| Hungarian | hu |
|
| Language | ISO |
|---|
| Icelandic | is |
| Indonesian (former in) | id |
| Interlingua | ia |
| Interlingue | ie |
| Inupiak | ik |
| Inuktitut (Eskimo) | iu |
| Irish | ga |
| Italian | it |
| Japanese | ja |
| Javanese | jw |
| Kannada | kn |
| Kashmiri | ks |
| Kazakh | kk |
| Kinyarwanda | rw |
| Kirghiz | ky |
| Kirundi | rn |
| Korean | ko |
| Kurdish | ku |
| Laothian | lo |
| Latin | la |
| Latvian, Lettish | lv |
| Lingala | ln |
| Lithuanian | lt |
| Macedonian | mk |
| Malagasy | mg |
| Malay | ms |
| Malayalam | ml |
| Maltese | mt |
| Maori | mi |
| Marathi | mr |
| Moldavian | mo |
| Mongolian | mn |
| Nauru | na |
| Nepali | ne |
| Norwegian | no |
| Occitan | oc |
| Oriya | or |
| Pashto, Pushto | ps |
| Persian | fa |
| Polish | pl |
| Portuguese | pt |
| Punjabi | pa |
| Quechua | qu |
| Rhaeto-Romance | rm |
| Romanian | ro |
| Russian | ru |
|
| Language | ISO |
|---|
| Samoan | sm |
| Sangro | sg |
| Sanskrit | sa |
| Scots Gaelic | gd |
| Serbian | sr |
| Serbo-Croatian | sh |
| Sesotho | st |
| Setswana | tn |
| Shona | sn |
| Sindhi | sd |
| Singhalese | si |
| Siswati | ss |
| Slovak | sk |
| Slovenian | sl |
| Somali | so |
| Spanish | es |
| Sudanese | su |
| Swahili | sw |
| Swedish | sv |
| Tagalog | tl |
| Tajik | tg |
| Tamil | ta |
| Tatar | tt |
| Tegulu | te |
| Thai | th |
| Tibetan | bo |
| Tigrinya | ti |
| Tonga | to |
| Tsonga | ts |
| Turkish | tr |
| Turkmen | tk |
| Twi | tw |
| Uigur | ug |
| Ukrainian | uk |
| Urdu | ur |
| Uzbek | uz |
| Vietnamese | vi |
| Volapuk | vo |
| Welch | cy |
| Wolof | wo |
| Xhosa | xh |
| Yiddish (former ji) | yi |
| Yoruba | yo |
| Zhuang | za |
| Zulu | zu |
|
up to sorting by Language
| ISO | Language |
|---|
| aa | Afar |
| ab | Abkhazian |
| af | Afrikaans |
| am | Amharic |
| ar | Arabic |
| as | Assamese |
| ay | Aymara |
| az | Azerbaijani |
| ba | Bashkir |
| be | Byelorussian |
| bg | Bulgarian |
| bh | Bihari |
| bi | Bislama |
| bn | Bengali |
| bo | Tibetan |
| br | Breton |
| ca | Catalan |
| co | Corsican |
| cs | Czech |
| cy | Welch |
| da | Danish |
| de | German |
| dz | Bhutani |
| el | Greek |
| en | English |
| eo | Esperanto |
| es | Spanish |
| et | Estonian |
| eu | Basque |
| fa | Persian |
| fi | Finnish |
| fj | Fiji |
| fo | Faeroese |
| fr | French |
| fy | Frisian |
| ga | Irish |
| gd | Scots Gaelic |
| gl | Galician |
| gn | Guarani |
| gu | Gujarati |
| ha | Hausa |
| hi | Hindi |
| he | Hebrew |
| hr | Croatian |
| hu | Hungarian |
| hy | Armenian |
|
| ISO | Language |
|---|
| ia | Interlingua |
| id | Indonesian |
| ie | Interlingue |
| ik | Inupiak |
| in | former Indonesian |
| is | Icelandic |
| it | Italian |
| iu | Inuktitut (Eskimo) |
| iw | former Hebrew |
| ja | Japanese |
| ji | former Yiddish |
| jw | Javanese |
| ka | Georgian |
| kk | Kazakh |
| kl | Greenlandic |
| km | Cambodian |
| kn | Kannada |
| ko | Korean |
| ks | Kashmiri |
| ku | Kurdish |
| ky | Kirghiz |
| la | Latin |
| ln | Lingala |
| lo | Laothian |
| lt | Lithuanian |
| lv | Latvian, Lettish |
| mg | Malagasy |
| mi | Maori |
| mk | Macedonian |
| ml | Malayalam |
| mn | Mongolian |
| mo | Moldavian |
| mr | Marathi |
| ms | Malay |
| mt | Maltese |
| my | Burmese |
| na | Nauru |
| ne | Nepali |
| nl | Dutch |
| no | Norwegian |
| oc | Occitan |
| om | (Afan) Oromo |
| or | Oriya |
| pa | Punjabi |
| pl | Polish |
| ps | Pashto, Pushto |
| pt | Portuguese |
| qu | Quechua |
|
| ISO | Language |
|---|
| rm | Rhaeto-Romance |
| rn | Kirundi |
| ro | Romanian |
| ru | Russian |
| rw | Kinyarwanda |
| sa | Sanskrit |
| sd | Sindhi |
| sg | Sangro |
| sh | Serbo-Croatian |
| si | Singhalese |
| sk | Slovak |
| sl | Slovenian |
| sm | Samoan |
| sn | Shona |
| so | Somali |
| sq | Albanian |
| sr | Serbian |
| ss | Siswati |
| st | Sesotho |
| su | Sudanese |
| sv | Swedish |
| sw | Swahili |
| ta | Tamil |
| te | Tegulu |
| tg | Tajik |
| th | Thai |
| ti | Tigrinya |
| tk | Turkmen |
| tl | Tagalog |
| tn | Setswana |
| to | Tonga |
| tr | Turkish |
| ts | Tsonga |
| tt | Tatar |
| tw | Twi |
| ug | Uigur |
| uk | Ukrainian |
| ur | Urdu |
| uz | Uzbek |
| vi | Vietnamese |
| vo | Volapuk |
| wo | Wolof |
| xh | Xhosa |
| yi | Yiddish |
| yo | Yoruba |
| za | Zhuang |
| zh | Chinese |
| zu | Zulu |
|
Use these language codes in your lang attribute on the html tag to define the language of your HTML or XHTML document.
<html lang="en">
If the entire page is not to be in a single language, you will need to provide a meta tag to set the page to UTF-8, then surround the text to be in a foreign language with tags defining the language:
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
<span lang="grc" xml:lang="grc">Greek text</span>
Note the use here of a 3-letter 639-2 language code for ancient Greek.
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