Macrolanguage
A macrolanguage may be considered either a language consisting of widely varying dialects, or a group of mutually intelligible speech varieties that are sometimes considered distinct languages.
In ISO 639-3, macrolanguages are specifically languages that group a set of closely related, mutually intelligible languages that are also coded separately.
African macrolanguages in ISO 639-3
References
- SIL International, "Macrolanguage mappings" http://www-01.sil.org/iso639-3/macrolanguages.asp
- Wikipedia, "ISO 639 macrolanguage" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_639_macrolanguage
- Wiktionary, "macrolanguage" https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/macrolanguage