This is the central repository for all hyphenation patterns (that we know of). These patterns are encoded in UTF-8, but can also be used with 8-bit TeX engines such as pdfTeX with the help of mechanisms provided with the package. It is meant to be a low-level package and is integrated with all major TeX distributions (TeX Live, MiKTeX, W32TeX); most TeX users should thus not concern themselves with this package, unless of course they’re working on the hyphenation patterns themselves.
If you are an author of hyphenation patterns and want to add or update them, please contact the maintainers through the mailing list: tex-hyphen@tug.org You can also visit the TeX hyphenation page for more information and technical details.