• Unicode Standard: Unicode is a standard for encoding, representing, and handling text in digital form. It assigns unique code points (integer values) to every character in a wide range of writing systems, including alphabets, ideograms, and symbols.

• Unicode Language Identifier (ULI): Unicode Language Identifier (ULI) is a string that identifies a language or language family in a Unicode environment. It typically consists of a two-letter ISO 639 language code, optionally followed by a two-letter ISO 3166 country code. For example, "en" represents English, "fr" represents French, "zh" represents Chinese.

  • To represent identifier for Shan language, there is no included ISO 639-1 for Shan language but three-letter ISO 639-2 code as "Shn"

  • ISO 639-1 code "sh" is assigned to Serbo-Croatian language, which is a collective term for several closely related South Slavic languages spoken in the Balkans. However, the code "sh" is also used for Shan language, which is a Tai-Kadai language spoken in Myanmar, Thailand, and China.

  • ISO 639-2 There're 2 interested identifier, "shn" and "tai"

    • "shn" is identifier for Shan language and it's type is "Living Language"
    • "tai" is identifier for Tai language and it's type is "Collective"
    • "tai" is used for remainder group language for "Ka-Tai" language group

  • ISO 3166-2:MM is the entry for Myanmar in ISO 3166-2, part of the ISO 3166 standard published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), which defines codes for the names of the principal subdivisions (e.g., provinces or states) of all countries coded in ISO 3166-1.

    • As of 2020, Myanmar ISO 3166-2 codes are defined for 7 regions, 7 states, and 1 union territory.
    • Reference Link

  • ISO 15924: ISO 15924, Codes for the representation of names of scripts

    • Shan script language has 3 script system represent on scriptsource.org
    • shn-Mymr Myanmar (Burmese) [Mymr] - this is most detail script Reference
    • shn-Thai Thai [Thai] Reference
    • shn-Tale Tai Le [Tale] Reference
    • Reference Link

Conclusion refer to Unicode Language Identifier (ULI) document

• for Shan language we can use 2 identifier

  • shn-MM for Shan language spoken in Myanmar
  • shn-TH for Shan language spoken in Thailand
    • because those are 2 countries mostly spoken in Shan
    • Unicode Language Identifier (ULI) is used for help identify the language used in a document or application

• To updating CLDR (Language/Script/Region Subtags)