Some ISO 639-2 codes that are commonly used for languages do not precisely represent a particular language or some related languages (as the above macrolanguages). They are regarded as collective language codes and are excluded from ISO 639-3. For a definition of macrolanguages and collective languages see .

The collective language codes in ISO 639-2 are listed below.

The following two codes are identified as collective codes in ISO 639-2 but are (at present) missing from ISO 639-5:

Codes registered for 639-2 that are listed as collective codes in ISO 639-5 (and collective codes by name in ISO 639-2):

Collections of languages
Special situations
Scopes and types
B and T codes