Here comes the Yiddish

[Doug Ewell]

Michael Everson <everson at evertype dot com> wrote:

> But the language is still Yiddish. Can't you use a script code to
> distinguish them? (Apart from the fact that ISO 15924 isn't available
> yet.)

and Sean M. Burke <sburke at cpan dot org> responded:

> Yes, I'm using the script code as the subtag.  I have no idea what ISO
> 15924 is.  Explain!

ISO 15924 is the forthcoming standard for script codes, analogous to ISO
639 for language codes and ISO 3166 for country codes.  You've actually
been using the ISO 15924 codes (hebr and latn) all along, perhaps
without knowing it.  (ISO 15924 actually recommends that script codes be
titlecased (Hebr and Latn), but case is not considered relevant in RFC
3066 language tags.)

By defining 4-letter second subtags to be script codes, in some future
revision to RFC 3066, it would become unnecessary to register special
tags like yi-hebr and yi-latn.  This situation will come up again and
again (e.g. az-Cyrl and az-Latn).

-Doug Ewell
 Fullerton, California