Language tags, the phillips draft, and procedures

[JFC (Jefsey) Morfin]

At 13:04 09/01/2005, Michael Everson wrote:

>At 03:09 +0100 2005-01-09, JFC (Jefsey) Morfin wrote:
>
>>As I indicated to Misha, what would really help would be a list of 
>>motivated support from IAB, Chairs of the IETF WGs from the different 
>>concerned areas, and non-English or non-American mother tongue involved 
>>network experts or authorities.
>
>*This* is racist. A person's mother tongue being English does not prevent 
>him or her from being multilingual or from being well-informed about 
>linguistics and linguistic taxonomy. Nor does a person's mother tongue 
>being another language confer upon him or her such expertise.

Michael,
as you may have noted I am a very, very patient person. But this absurd 
comment demonstrates a surprising non scientific bias or a real misreading 
ability. Even in Franglish an "involved network expert or authority" has a 
clear meaning.

This debate extensively uses English for usage examples. That language (and 
its particulars, or lacks of) is fully covered: I never saw an example of 
usage problem in Greek, Russian, Chinese, Arabic, Bambara, Afar, French of 
Montfermeil, of the Cannebière or of Bercy, etc. in this debate. And I saw 
DNS, new developments, other technical areas' needs objected. I saw 
Word/LANGIDs and HTML related comments, but none related to other 
text-processing cultures systems such LaTeX, PDF, Teletex etc.

We have well-informed linguistics and linguistic taxonomy and English 
mother tongue experts a plenty: Misha provided a list and I am sure he can 
extend it. What I ask is we are can hear from people able to say how the 
proposed solutions fit their own areas of expertise: in network, in jargon 
support, in arts, in diversified culture support and protection. etc. Also, 
obviously from the entities I quoted and their national likes (it has been 
documented enough there was no English legal authority), for their Internet 
Community Trustee.

I see no reason for anyone objecting to such an inclusive desire. One does 
not standardize about what is the dearest to people and the most important 
to their dignity, in just listening to a small part of them even if they 
are their best entomologists.

jfc