Are you familiar with the codes that identify languages?

Did you know that there is a standard for identifying languages? ISO 639 is the international standard for language codes. The objective of the standard is to establish internationally recognised 2, 3 or 4 character codes for representing languages or language families. These codes are used, for example, for bibliographical references, in computer systems and as indicators of the language version in websites. ISO 639-1 is a standardised nomenclature based on two-letter codes used for classifying all recognised languages in the world.

Click here for the complete list of codes: http://www.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/php/code_list.php Here are the codes corresponding to the 24 official languages of the European Community, listed alphabetically based on the official designations of the languages in original script.