LANGUAGE TAG REGISTRATION FORM
John Cowan
jcowan at reutershealth.com
Fri Apr 11 13:40:14 CEST 2003
Mark Davis scripsit:
> Is there a distinction in orthography between each pair of the following?
> Unknown, yet 3066 permits all of them, since it is better to be safe than
> sorry.
[list of all possible national Englishes snipped]
Without attempting to undermine your point, IMHO the following list is the
outer limit of plausibility:
en-AG en-AI en-AS en-AU en-BB en-BM en-BN en-BS en-BW en-BZ en-CA en-CK
en-CM en-DM en-ER en-ET en-FJ en-FK en-FM en-GB en-GD en-GH en-GI en-GM
en-GU en-GY en-IE en-IL en-IO en-JM en-KE en-KI en-KN en-KY en-LC en-LR
en-LS en-MP en-MS en-MT en-MU en-MW en-NA en-NF en-NG en-NR en-NU en-NZ
en-PG en-PH en-PK en-PN en-PR en-PW en-RW en-SB en-SC en-SG en-SH en-SL
en-SO en-SZ en-TC en-TK en-TO en-TT en-UG en-US en-VC en-VG en-VI en-VU
en-WS en-ZA en-ZM en-ZW
These are the countries in which English is an official or national
language (according to the Ethnologue), and therefore which might
conceivably legislate on the subject.
> for az-*: AZ, IR, ...
This is the point you weren't making before: that there is a difference
between Azeri (in the same script) in Azerbaycan and in Iran.
> which is why a generative mechanism is much simpler.
So it is. But what we are talking about here is what you need *before* a
generative mechanism is in place. Consider, say, Chiru aka Chhori, which
under my current proposal would be labeled sit-cdf. If this language
were commercially important, it would be worthwhile registering this tag.
("sit" is ISO 639-2 for "Sino-Tibetan (other)".) Furthermore, Chiru
can be written in Latin or Bengali, so sit-cdf-latn and sit-cdf-beng
are also useful registrations.
But given that there is no significant body of Chiru speakers outside
India, do you also *need* to register sit-cdf-in, sit-cdf-latn-in,
and sit-cdf-beng-in for short-term purposes (i.e. until 3066bis comes out)?
--
He made the Legislature meet at one-horse John Cowan
tank-towns out in the alfalfa belt, so that jcowan at reutershealth.com
hardly nobody could get there and most of http://www.reutershealth.com
the leaders would stay home and let him go http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
to work and do things as he pleased. --Mencken, _Declaration of Independence_
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