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.
© 1997-2000 MathGuide, SUB Götingen