The Language authority table is a controlled vocabulary that lists concepts associated with languages. Its main scope is to support activities associated with publication process. The concepts included are correlated with the ISO 639 international standard. This standard is issued in several parts:
ISO 639-1 contains strictly two alphabetic letters (alpha-2),
ISO 639-2/B (B = bibliographic) is used for bibliographic purpose (alpha-3),
ISO 639-2/T (T = terminology) is used for technical purpose (alpha-3),
ISO 639-3 covers all the languages and macro-languages of the world (alpha-3); the values are compliant with ISO 639-2/T.
If an authority code is needed for a language without assigned ISO code, an alphanumeric code is created in order to not confuse with ISO codes that are strictly alphabetic.
Contributions to the Language authority table are accepted following a review made by EU Vocabularies team of the Publications Office of the EU.
The Language authority table is under governance of the Interinstitutional Metadata and Formats Committee (IMFC). It is maintained by the Publications Office of the European Union and disseminated on the EU Vocabularies website. It is a corporate reference data asset covered by the Corporate Reference Data Management policy of the European Commission.