Does Unicode encode scripts or languages?

he Unicode Standard encodes characters on a per script basis. So, for example, there is only one set of Latin characters defined, despite the fact that the Latin script is used for the alphabets of thousands of different languages. The same principle applies for any other script (Cyrillic, Arabic, Ethiopic, Devanagari, ...) which is used for writing many different languages. However, the Unicode Standard does not encode scripts per se. For a listing of script names, see UTR #24, Script Names. For the ISO standard for script codes, see ISO/IEC 15924, Code for the Representation of Names of Scripts. For the ISO standard for language codes, see ISO 639, Code for the Representation of Names of Languages.