Introduction

Wiktionary has its own set of language codes based on those of the ISO, and its own set of language names that go with them. Problems arise when these codes don't match the ISO ones. This is mostly due to differences in scope: Wiktionary disagrees with the ISO as to which lects are independent languages and which are varieties of other lects. There are also differences as to which name or variation of a name should be used as the main name.

On top of that, there are languages associated with a specific country where the international code for the country is different from the language code of the language spoken there.

Add to that the large number of languages and language codes as well as the superficial similarity between different language names and between different language codes, and you have confused editors who make a mess of things.

Another common source of errors is editors who are ignorant of what the codes are there for and others who are careless or absent-minded about which codes they use in which language. They copy templates from other entries and reuse them without updating the language codes.

Common errors

Code used	Correct header for code used	Header used	Correct code for header used	Notes
br	Breton	Belarusian	be	Typo
bs	none- module error	Bosnian (Serbo-Croatian)	sh
ch	Chamorro	Chinese	zh
cnr	none- module error	Montenegrin (Serbo-Croatian)	sh
cu	Old Church Slavonic	Welsh	cy	Typo
hr	none- module error	Croatian Serbo-Croatian	sh
jp	none- module error	Japanese	ja
kr	Kanuri	Korean	ko
li	Limburgish	Lithuanian	lt
ne	Nepali	Dutch	nl
nn	Norwegian Nynorsk	Old Norse	non	Typo
pa	Punjabi	Pashto	ps
sc	Sardinian	Serbo-Croatian	sh
sc	Sardinian	Sicilian	scn
sr	none- module error	Serbian (Serbo-Croatian}	sh
sw	Swahili	Swedish	sv
se	Northern Sami	Swedish	sv
syc	Syriac	Assyrian Neo-Aramaic	aii
as	Assamese	Bengali	bn
bn	Bengali	Assamese	as
id	Indonesian	Malay	ms
ms	Malay	Indonesian	id
el	Greek	Ancient Greek	grc
ur	Urdu	Punjabi	pa

Groups

These are sets of languages where the same editors work on many of them, and don't pay much attention to which codes they're using for which languages

Philippines

(not all of them, by any means)

bcl, Bikol Central
ceb, Cebuano
hil, Hiligaynon
ilo, Ilocano
kne, Kankanaey
mdh, Maguindanao
pag, Pangasinan
pam, Kapampangan
sgd, Surigaonan
tl, Tagalog
tsg, Tausug
war, Waray-Waray

Malay-Indonesian

id, Indonesian
kaw, Old Javanese
jv, Javanese
ms, Malay

Indic

hi (Hindi) or gu (Gujarati) codes tend to be used for a wide variety of these languages

Bengali, etc.

as, Assamese
bn, Bengali
syl, Sylheti

Dravidian

kn, Kannada
ml, Malayalam
ta, Tamil
te, Telugu

Eastern Romance

ro, Romanian
ruo, Istro-Romanian
rup, Aromanian
ruq, Megleno-Romanian

Goidelic

ga, Irish
gd, Scottish Gaelic
gv, Manx
sga, Old Irish

High German

bar, Bavarian
de, German
gmw-cfr, Central Franconian
gmw-ecg, East Central German
hrx, Hunsrik
lb, Luxembourgish
wym, Vilamovian

Overlap with templates

code	Template	Language
af	`{{affix}}`	`[[Category:Afrikaans language]]`
alt	`{{alter}}`	`[[Category:Southern Altai language]]`
ant	`{{antonyms}}`	`[[Category:Antakarinya language]]`
as	`{{antsense}}`	`[[Category:Assamese language]]`
bor	`{{borrowed}}`	`[[Category:Borôro language]]`
cal	`{{calque}}`	`[[Category:Carolinian language]]`
co	`{{collocation}}`	`[[Category:Corsican language]]`
cog	`{{cognate}}`	`[[Category:Chong language]]`
com	`{{compound}}`	`[[Category:Comanche language]]`
con	`{{confix}}`	`[[Category:Cofán language]]`
cot	`{{coordinate terms}}`	`[[Category:Caquinte language]]`
dbt	`{{doublet}}`	`[[Category:Ben Tey language]]`
der	`{{derived}}`	`[[Category:Deori language]]`
dim	`{{diminutive}}`	`[[Category:Dime language]]`
gl	`{{gloss}}`	`[[Category:Galician language]]`
hmp	`{{homophone}}`	`[[Category:Northern Mashan Hmong language]]`
inh	`{{inherited}}`	`[[Category:Ingush language]]`
lb	`{{label}}`	`[[Category:Luxembourgish language]]`
lbl	`{{label}}`	`[[Category:Libon Bikol language]]`
lg	`{{glossary}}`	`[[Category:Luganda language]]`
ngd	`{{non-gloss definition}}`	`[[Category:Ngando (Central African Republic) language]]`
nl	`{{nonlemma}}`	`[[Category:Dutch language]]`
nom	`{{nominalization }}`	`[[Category:Nocamán language]]`
or	`{{original research}}`	`[[Category:Odia language]]`
par	`{{parasynonyms}}`	`[[Category:Panamint language]]`
pl	`{{pseudo-loan}}`	`[[Category:Polish language]]`
pre	`{{prefix}}`	`[[Category:Principense language]]`
psm	`{{phono-semantic matching}}`	`[[Category:Pauserna language]]`
see	`{{see}}`	`[[Category:Seneca language]]`
sid	`{{senseid}}`	`[[Category:Sidamo language]]`
sl	`{{semantic loan}}`	`[[Category:Slovene language]]`
smc	`{{smallcaps}}`	`[[Category:Som language]]`
ss	`{{semantic shift}}`	`[[Category:Swazi language]]`
swp	`{{slim-wikipedia}}`	`[[Category:Suau language]]`
syn	`{{synonyms}}`	`[[Category:Senaya language]]`
tcl	`{{transclude}}`	`[[Category:Taman (Myanmar) language]]`
tl	`{{template}}`	`[[Category:Tagalog language]]`
tlb	`{{term label}}`	`[[Category:Tobelo language]]`
top	`{{topics}}`	`[[Category:Papantla Totonac language]]`
tr	`{{tea room}}`	`[[Category:Turkish language]]`
ubl	`{{unbulleted list}}`	`[[Category:Buhi'non Bikol language]]`
unk	`{{unknown}}`	`[[Category:Enawené-Nawé language]]`

Relevant maintenance categories

Category:Entries with incorrect language header by language

Category:Pages with nonstandard language headings

Mostly due to incorrect language codes in headword templates, but also misspelled, misformatted or missing language headers. There are a few cases where someone uses a language name not accepted by Wiktionary and puts the language code of a related language in the templates to avoid module errors.

Category:Terms in nonstandard scripts by language

Mostly due to incorrect language codes in templates, but also often due to using a transliteration of the type found in etymological references instead of the term in the correct script.

There are also problems with the modules' ability to deal with entries for diacritics that aren't on letters, and with certain letters in common scripts that are only used in a small number of the languages written in those scripts. These will need to be fixed by updating the modules.

The genuine cases of terms that are attested in scripts otherwise not used for their language should be ignored.

Relevant abuse filters

68: Missing headword templates

Wiktionary:Todo/Language code errors