After not manually updating the tables for some months I finally wrote a Makefile and a short Python program helping in updating the ISO 639-1/-2/-3 tables provided by the LoC and SIL. See the attached archive for Makefile, download script and patch files. Check the README file and hit "make" to get started.

As the LoC now started to deprecate ISO 639-2(B) codes, the columns Part2B and Part2T which before served as foreign keys are not directly useable anymore: the ISO_639_3 table continues to contain the old Part2B entries which makes JOINS a hassle. I therefore changed the ISO_639_2 table to include an own "Id" column serving as a key. Now a JOIN can simply be done on this new column, which both tables integrate.

Small changes where made February the 5th (ISO 639-2), the 18th, the 28th and March the 5th (all ISO 639-3). gsw now includes Alsatian as a name in ISO 639-2 and ISO 639-3 and mly, muw and xst where split into new codes. I hope I didn't forget any changes.

A bit late I realised that SIL changed the ISO 639-3 macrolanguage table format two days after the release of the 2007 cycle.

With the deprecation of now five language codes that are mapped to a macrolanguage it seems to have been inevitable to add a column indicating whether the code is still in use or obsolete and put the deprecated codes back in which seem to have been removed before. After a quick glance the change two days later didn't create new macro mappings, but just added the deprecated codes back again.

See Deprecated languages codes mapped to a macrolanguage for a list of these codes.

Deprecated language codes mapped to a macrolanguage are still being listed in the macrolanguage table. See ISO 639-3 changes Macrolanguage table format. Here's a list of these codes:

In Mapping from Ethnologue 14 to ISO 639-2 I wrote about mapping Ethno 14 codes to ISO 639-2. At this time I didn't know that there actually is a mapping to ISO 639-3 provided by Ethnologue under http://www.ethnologue.com/codes/updating_codes.asp.

The SQL table create commands are given on the page, load the data using: