Brendan,
There is an ISO 639 2-letter identifier for Marathi ("mr"), but as far
as I know, none for Konkani. This is not really surprising, since the 639
2-letter identifier list is rather short, and omits many, many languages
of the world, including some rather sizable ones. (Wu and Cantonese each
have more than 60 million speakers! Igbo maybe 15 million.)
The USMARC "kok" 3-letter abbreviation for Konkani is presumably in
alignment with the ISO 639-2 3-letter language abbreviations:
"After the final publication of ISO 639-2, both the U.S. national standard
Z39.52 (Codes for the Representation of Languages for Information
Interchange) and the USMARC Code List for Languages will be revised for
consistency with the international standard. At that time twenty-five
USMARC language codes for infrequently used languages will be changed,
thirty-two new languages codes will be added, and one will be made
obsolete. In the future, it is expected that the three standards will
remain compatible. The Library of Congress has been designated the
Registration Authority for ISO 639-2..." -- June 4, 1999
See: http://www.loc.gov/marc/iso639.html
--Ken
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