sl-rozaj: language-dialect-subdialect strings

Peter Constable petercon at microsoft.com
Wed Oct 15 15:21:19 CEST 2003


> -----Original Message-----
> From: ietf-languages-bounces at alvestrand.no [mailto:ietf-languages-
> bounces at alvestrand.no] On Behalf Of han.steenwijk at unipd.it


> > 2.
> > I'd agree with both Han and Peter that strings other than 4-letters
> > be used (as ISO 15924 strings are likely to be 4-character strings).
> 
> Are we on the safe side with alpha5 tags?

I think so.

> I once read that the ISO 639
> committee
> is discussing the introduction of such tags.

There is no such plan at this time, and I don't foresee one in the
future.



> The
> sub-dialects have enough in common to have a fall-back on "-rozaj-"
making
> sense. Falling back on "sl-" is far less unproblematic, because of the
> considerable difficulties in mutual understanding the speakers of
standard
> Slovene and Resian have. They really have to learn each other's
languages.

If you know of documentation on that, I suspect the Ethnologue Editor
would be interested to discuss it with you.


> > 5. I wonder, given the documentation on Resian, whether Resian
should
> > be listed as a language, and have a single code (also in ISO 639-2).
> 
> Sometimes I wonder, too. Maybe ISO 639-2 is a bit too much, as there
is
> little
> specialised literature in Resian, but the ISO 639-3 criteria can be
> satisfied.

If you think that may be appropriate, it might be beneficial for you to
start discussing the dialectology issues with the Ethnologue Editor. The
15th edn will be published next year, and any revisions would have to be
settled very soon. I don't know what their timetable is exactly, but
there may still be a window to make changes in the 15th edn. What is in
the 15th edition will be used in drafts of ISO 639-3.


Peter
 
Peter Constable
Globalization Infrastructure and Font Technologies
Microsoft Windows Division



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