American Indian/Alaska Native languages

Michael Everson everson@evertype.com
Fri, 10 May 2002 19:12:23 +0100


At 10:25 -0600 2002-05-08, Pavla &OR Francis Frazier wrote:

>Michael, if I remember correctly, you are the "gatekeeper"  for the
>IETF, correct?

I'm the language-tag reviewer.

>I just want to submit these in a way that will most
>likely result in their inclusion.  So, when you say you are
>uncomfortable about this- are you referring to the idea of a mass
>registration or re: my use of references?  As far as my doing the
>individual forms, I'm happy to do so.  Regrding the references, they
>are primarily from the Ehtnologue and the Smithsonian Handbook of
>North American Indians, language volume.

I'm not happy with those particular references. There are many books 
in the world which list languages by name or family or whatnot. I 
have a lot of them myself.

For IETF I interpret the rule to mean that books in a language, 
especially (but not limited to) grammars or dictionaries, identifies 
the entity being registered. That's how we've operated for other 
languages. I don't think it would be right to submit 159 languages 
all with the "survey" sources you mention above.
-- 
Michael Everson *** Everson Typography *** http://www.evertype.com