There are over 6000 recognised extant languages on Earth today and at least several hundred in wide usage.  References to language names form a component focus of an international data exchange network such as that developed by the Global Biodiversity Information Facility.   In order to effectively manage communications and data exchange, it is important to identify the source language of the communication.   

Our goal is to catalogue the names of languages as they are referenced in the native languages of the participants in the GBIF network and to link these to the associated ISO language code for that language.  In so doing, we can build better exchange and data interpretation components of the GBIF network.