On Tue, Apr 14, 2026 at 08:48:59PM +0100, Gavin Smith wrote: > On Tue, Apr 14, 2026 at 08:04:19PM +0100, Gavin Smith wrote: > > For example, if there was a real practical need for distinguishing > > variants of a language, maybe the ISO would invent new top-level codes > > for them. There are ISO 639 codes for languages that could be considered > > dialects. There is "yue" for Yue (Cantonese) even though there is already > > "zh" for Chinese. There is "oc" for Occitan as well as codes for closely > > related Romance languages. There is "sco" for Scots even though there > > is also "en" for English. > > > > Correction: "yue" is an ISO 639-3 code, while we document @documentlanguage > to take an ISO 639-2 code argument. ISO 639-3 codes are much more extensive > than ISO 639-2 codes and are assigned by SIL International (a Christian > missionary group).
We actually use ISO 639-3 codes since some time, I added that a while ago (in 2022), they are supported by gettext (not all the 3 letter languages, but at least some). It is the manual that should be updated. I switched (back) to IANA very recently when I understood that it was in fact the best source of data, as it has the updated ISO codes, the ISO 15924 scripts (and the variants) and it is updated often. (libintl-perl does not actually support 3 letter language names, that's on my TODO list). -- Pat
