Excel: The language code that indicates the language in which your eBook is written (two characters). ONIX: Language role (language of text, language of original text, etc) and the three-character language code.
--> Required field.
Correct Usage (example)
| Info | Excel | ONIX 2.1 and 3.0 |
| Reference Name | Language: EN |
|
| Short Tag | N/A |
|
| Character Limits | 2 | 3 |
Excel: BRL, English, Eng
Please note that currently we don't support multiple language codes for a single title. Please choose one specific language code for the text and include information about the bilingual nature of the text in the description. We suggest selecting the language code for the audience the title most widely serves.
Supported Languages
Here at Kobo, we only support a limited list of languages for books. If a publisher sends us metadata for a book in a language we don't support, that metadata will fail. Below is the list of our supported languages and their corresponding codes for use in Excel and ONIX metadata.
| Language | Excel | ONIX 2.1 and 3.0 |
| English | EN | eng |
| French | FR | fre |
| German | DE | ger |
| Spanish | ES | spa |
| Italian | IT | ita |
| Japanese | JA | jpa |
| Abkhazian | AB | abk |
| Afar | AA | aar |
| Afrikaans | AF | afr |
| Akan | AK | aka |
| Albanian | SQ | alb |
| Amharic | AM | amh |
| Arabic | AR | ara |
| Aragonese | AN | arg |
| Armenian | HY | arm |
| Assamese | AS | asm |
| Avaric | AV | ava |
| Avestan | AE | ave |
| Aymara | AY | aym |
| Azerbaijani | AZ | aze |
| Bambara | BM | bam |
| Bashkir | BA | bak |
| Basque | EU | baq |
| Belarusian | BE | bel |
| Bengali; Bangla | BN | ben |
| Bihari | BH | bih |
| Bislama | BI | bis |
| Bosnian | BS | bos |
| Breton | BR | bre |
| Bulgarian | BG | bul |
| Burmese | MY | bur |
| Catalan; Valencian | CA | cat |
| Chamorro | CH | cha |
| Chechen | CE | che |
| Chichewa; Chewa; Nyanja | NY | nya |
| Chinese | ZH | chi |
| Chuvash | CV | chv |
| Cornish | KW | cor |
| Corsican | CO | cos |
| Cree | CR | cre |
| Croatian | HR | hrv |
| Czech | CS | cze |
| Danish | DA | dan |
| Divehi; Dhivehi; Maldivian; | DV | div |
| Dutch | NL | dut |
| Dzongkha | DZ | dzo |
| Esperanto | EO | epo |
| Estonian | ET | est |
| Ewe | EE | ewe |
| Faroese | FO | fao |
| Fijian | FJ | fij |
| Finnish | FI | fin |
| Fula; Fulah; Pulaar; Pular | FF | ful |
| Galician | GL | glg |
| Georgian | KA | geo |
| Greek, Modern | EL | gre |
| Guaraní | GN | grn |
| Gujarati | GU | guj |
| Haitian; Haitian Creole | HT | hat |
| Hausa | HA | hau |
| Hebrew (modern) | HE | heb |
| Herero | HZ | her |
| Hindi | HI | hin |
| Hiri Motu | HO | hmo |
| Hungarian | HU | hun |
| Interlingua | IA | ina |
| Indonesian | ID | ind |
| Interlingue | IE | ile |
| Irish | GA | gle |
| Igbo | IG | ibo |
| Inupiaq | IK | ipk |
| Ido | IO | ido |
| Icelandic | IS | ice |
| Inuktitut | IU | iku |
| Javanese | JV | jav |
| Kalaallisut, Greenlandic | KL | kal |
| Kannada | KN | kan |
| Kanuri | KR | kau |
| Kashmiri | KS | kas |
| Kazakh | KK | kaz |
| Khmer | KM | khm |
| Kikuyu, Gikuyu | KI | kik |
| Kinyarwanda | RW | kin |
| Kyrgyz | KY | kir |
| Komi | KV | kom |
| Kongo | KG | kon |
| Korean | KO | kor |
| Kurdish | KU | kur |
| Kwanyama, Kuanyama | KJ | kua |
| Latin | LA | lat |
| Luxembourgish, Letzeburgesch | LB | ltz |
| Ganda | LG | lug |
| Limburgish, Limburgan, Limburger | LI | lim |
| Lingala | LN | lin |
| Lao | LO | lao |
| Lithuanian | LT | lit |
| Luba-Katanga | LU | lua |
| Latvian | LV | lav |
| Manx | GV | glv |
| Macedonian | MK | mac |
| Malagasy | MG | mlg |
| Malay | MS | may |
| Malayalam | ML | mal |
| Maltese | MT | mlt |
| Māori | MI | mao |
| Marathi (Marāṭhī) | MR | mar |
| Marshallese | MH | mah |
| Mongolian | MN | mon |
| Nauru | NA | nau |
| Navajo, Navaho | NV | nav |
| Norwegian Bokmål | NB | nob |
| North Ndebele | ND | nde |
| Nepali | NE | nep |
| Ndonga | NG | ndo |
| Norwegian Nynorsk | NN | nno |
| Norwegian | NO | nor |
| Nuosu | II | iii |
| South Ndebele | NR | nde |
| Occitan | OC | oci |
| Ojibwe, Ojibwa | OJ | oji |
| Old Church Slavonic, Church Slavonic, Old Bulgarian | CU | chu |
| Oromo | OM | oro |
| Oriya | OR | ori |
| Ossetian, Ossetic | OS | oss |
| Panjabi, Punjabi | PA | pan |
| Pāli | PI | pli |
| Persian (Farsi) | FA | per |
| Polish | PL | pol |
| Pashto, Pushto | PS | pus |
| Portuguese | PT | por |
| Quechua | QU | que |
| Romansh | RM | roh |
| Kirundi (Rundi) | RN | run |
| Romanian | RO | rum |
| Russian | RU | rus |
| Sanskrit (Saṁskṛta) | SA | san |
| Sardinian | SC | srd |
| Sindhi | SD | snd |
| Northern Sami | SE | smn |
| Samoan | SM | smo |
| Sango | SG | sag |
| Serbian | SR | scc |
| Scottish Gaelic; Gaelic | GD | gla |
| Shona | SN | sna |
| Sinhala, Sinhalese | SI | sin |
| Slovak | SK | slo |
| Slovene | SL | slv |
| Somali | SO | som |
| Southern Sotho | ST | sot |
| Sundanese | SU | sun |
| Swahili | SW | swa |
| Swati | SS | ssw |
| Swedish | SV | swe |
| Tamil | TA | tam |
| Telugu | TE | tel |
| Tajik | TG | tgk |
| Thai | TH | tha |
| Tigrinya | TI | tir |
| Tibetan Standard, Tibetan, Central | BO | tib |
| Turkmen | TK | tuk |
| Tagalog | TL | tgl |
| Tswana | TN | tsn |
| Tonga (Tonga Islands) | TO | tog |
| Turkish | TR | tur |
| Tsonga | TS | tso |
| Tatar | TT | tat |
| Twi | TW | twi |
| Tahitian | TY | tah |
| Uyghur, Uighur | UG | uig |
| Ukrainian | UK | ukr |
| Urdu | UR | urd |
| Uzbek | UZ | uzb |
| Venda | VE | ven |
| Vietnamese | VI | vie |
| Volapük | VO | vol |
| Walloon | WA | wln |
| Welsh | CY | wel |
| Wolof | WO | wol |
| Western Frisian | FY | fry |
| Xhosa | XH | xho |
| Yiddish | YI | yid |
| Yoruba | YO | yor |
| Zhuang, Chuang | ZA | zha |
| Zulu | ZU | zul |