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5 unusual facts about ISO 639

ISO 639-1

Infoterm (International Information Center for Terminology) is the registration authority for ISO 639-1 codes.

Logonyms may be either officially recognized names (e.g., via a governmental authority or the ISO 639-3 code) or less formalized or standardized names used by speakers or non-speakers to denote a particular language.

NHJ

ISO 639-3 code "nhj" for the Tlalitzlipa Nahuatl language, a Nahuatl dialect

OTW

otw, the ISO 639-3 language code for Ottawa language, a dialect of the Ojibwe language, spoken by the Ottawa people in southern Ontario in Canada, and northern Michigan in the United States

Zxx

zxx is a code of the ISO 639-2 and ISO 639-3 standards of language acronyms meaning "no linguistic content".

Classical Gaelic

Ethnologue gives the name "Hiberno-Scottish Gaelic" (and the ISO 639-3 code ghc) as a cover term for Classical Gaelic and Early Modern Irish.

OJS

ISO 639 language designation for the Oji-Cree language, also known as the Severn Ojibwa language or Anishininiimowin (Anishinini language)

AUJ

Awjila language (ISO 639-3: AUJ), a Berber language spoken in Cyrenaica, Libya

BJN

Banjar language, an Indonesian agglutinative language, ISO 639-3 code

BXW

Bankagooma (ISO 639-3 code BXW), a language native to Mali.

GGR

Aghu Tharrnggala language (ISO 639-3 code ggr), an extinct language from Australia

GGW

Gogodala language (ISO 639-3 code: ggw), a Papuan language of Papua New Guinea

Ghe

Southern Ghale language, a Tibeto-Burman language of Nepal; ISO-639-3 code: ghe

GRB

Grebo language (ISO 639-2 language code), spoken by the Grebo people of Liberia and the Krumen of Ivory Coast.

Historical language

A further ISO 639-3 criterion for historic languages is that they have a distinct literature from their descendant languages: in the example of Old English, Beowulf and other works of Old English literature form a distinct body of material.