Proposal: Language code "de-DE-trad"

[Keld Jørn Simonsen]

On Mon, Feb 11, 2002 at 09:31:33AM -0600, Peter_Constable@sil.org wrote:
> These four registration requests look to me to be well-motivated, and the 
> proposed codes are reasonable, with one possible concern: de-DE and de-AT 
> are already in use designating data in the tradition orthographies. Does 
> it make sense to use the shorter tags to mean the traditional 
> orthographies, or should the shorter tags become understood to be 
> ambiguous with regard to the orthographies?

I really think codes like de-DE-1996 are better than de-DE-trad.
We may have more spelling reforms, and the internet may be with
us for some time, decades if not centuries.

"trad" may also be misleading, as traditional chinese is not
outdated chinese, it is used eg today in Taiwan, while 
the simplified chinese is used today in the mainland China. 
So there is a difference between traditional/simplified but
bot current, and traditional/modern orthography.

I would rather thus use a year to qualify the language version.

An issue is what the year should denote.
Should it be the beginning of the new orthography, or the end of it?

I think the most logical is to use the beginning year, this is
how it is thought of in Danish at least. The orthographies are
defined by a book or set of rules that were published at a certain
date and people know them by that. 

Then the non-qualified language code should be the most current
version. Håvard Hjulstad, the convener and editor of one of the
ISO 639 standard proposed this, and I find much reson in that.
I think it would be premature for IETF to go and make a rule for
this, at least without some kind of advising from the ISO group
for ISO 639.

Kind regards
keld