Language X within scope of language Y

[JFC (Jefsey) Morfin]

Dear L. Gillam,
I have been recently told by a English friend a funny origin of the word 
"Frog" for the French. French language and, in result, thinking, is so 
tailored to quick case/generalization/generalized case representing 
technical, political etc. leap frogs (also later in History dubbed as 
"Cartesian") that English people used to call "Frogs" people speaking that 
language (whatever the origin: the guy told me about German, Italian, even 
African French speaking people - 16th century - being called that way). 
This was probably a joke, but when I read your post I feel I may not have 
clearly enough explained the simplicity of the generalization I call for (I 
will explain it again), and how much you would be horrified if I started 
talking of my pet subject of a unified theory of information and of the 
digital decoherence :-).

You may know Peter Danninos books on Major Thompson. This British person 
lands in Calais and the first lady he sees is red haired. So he generalizes 
in is diary, "French women have red hairs". This is in substance what the 
current tags of the Draft only permits. What I say is simply - either drop 
the "replace 3066" and the tag is used by what yu do. Or consider your tag 
as my lang5tag by default from your worldwide authoritative college. Mine 
only permitting the "French-Women-Red Hair-First_seen-Major Thompson" 
documentation, which gives more chance to survive to the 31 millions of non 
red haired other French persons, and to the Red Haired girl to travel back 
home ... in the UK.

Now, about teflon. My wife noted on a note : "buy an English Teflon Pan". 
Great ! Clear. A good xml tag if any. A few years ago she had told me "buy 
an English Pan" and we had awful time in the morning with fried eggs 
because I purchased an aluminum pan. How silly ! Happily she keeps reading 
Addison and noted "teflon" too !!! So, I went to the SuperMarket. Looks at 
the Pans. Found the Teflon pans. And then I panicked: they had small, 
medium, and large ones, with blue or read handles .....

IRT the fra-Latn-US vs. fra-Latn-UK this is a very interesting issue. For 
example the word "Chesapeake" is "victory" in "fra" and in "fra-Latn-US" 
and "even" in fra-Latn-UK. I can suggest another difficulty between "fra" 
and "fra-Latn-US" and "fra-Latn-US": "bush" means "ally" in the last two 
and is broadly used in various different meaning in "fra". Being serious 
(jokes are the best way to test a language) you see you do not need 
billions of memory to note differences. In networking processes this is 
named a "patch". Let see the value of the patches.

Default - registered by Yahoo through  ietf-languages at alvestrand.no : 
fra-latn-fr
.....
Bush >  comment: President
Chesapeake > comment: condos for sale
.....

AUF (200.000 words) fra-latn-fr-*-auf
....
Bush  > comment: misc
Chesapeake >    comment: victory
....

American Patch - fra-latn-us-xxx-xxx plus:
Bush >  comment: President

English Patch - fra-lantn-en-xxx-xxx plus:
Chesapeake > comment: no

You see that in using one registration or another and one patch or another 
in the DATA command of the OPES of this list ones will have totally 
different texts.

Difficult to do? Well when you call a css file or an RDF file, what are you 
doing :-)))) No rocket (to the stars) science for that.

All he best!
HA's Troll


At 12:02 21/01/2005, L.Gillam wrote:


>JFC,
>
>Though we would all like to travel to the stars and the far reaches of the 
>galaxy, we first have to get into space.
>
>I can conceive of an application context where I would like to retrieve 
>text written by person A, and be able to read it in my "own language", 
>however the necessary efforts required to undertake such an endeavour (6 
>billion people?) suggests a very long time for realisation - and if you 
>were to follow the arguments on national identify card schemes in the UK, 
>you'd discover why. Of course, this does not preclude experimental work 
>that uses any or all of ISO 639/3166 and RFC3066/3066bis to explore this. 
>Indeed, this would seem to be another application of these items, and 
>tends to validate their existence.
>
>Discussions here have considered, broadly, what "tagging" entails for 
>content - indeed, what can be tagged (written language predominantly - how 
>you tag fragments of speech in "binary" data using xml:lang I've yet to 
>fully comprehend - BinX perhaps?). As we get towards finer grained aspects 
>- when can a word/phrase be said to belong to a language? - we start to 
>discover more "dark matter" in the linguistic universe. Such issues are 
>questions also for identifying sublanguages - is that a term from 
>"Theoretical Physics" or "Nuclear Physics"? Where does Biology end and 
>Computing begin in Bioinformatics? Is "kaput" English or German? When you 
>begin asking whether person X has adopted "deja vu" as part of their 
>personal English dictionary or whether it is in their dictionary of 
>phrases borrowed from French, you start exploring the boundaries of your 
>own sanity.
>
>In order to get to the stars, you need substances like teflon, and from 
>this, sometimes you can create non-stick frying pans. If 
>"fr-Latn-US-ietf_language_style-ietf_language at alvestrand.no" is the goal, 
>stabilising "fr-Latn-US" would seem to be the teflon you can start with.
>
>Now, the question I don't think has been asked (and here a additional 
>searching mechanisms may or may not have helped) is: do generative 
>mechanisms allow for both "fr-Latn-US" and "fr-US-Latn" - are the 
>semantics of these constructions considered different?
>
>The other question I have is, could the "algorithm" and the assumptions be 
>simplified, for example using wildcards (e.g. zh-**-Hans) as, for example, 
>in font descriptions in Unix? Rushed programmers sometimes seek shortcuts!
>
>Best Regards.
>
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: JFC (Jefsey) Morfin [mailto:jefsey at jefsey.com]
> > Sent: 20 January 2005 16:02
> > To: Gillam L Dr (Computing); petercon
> > Cc: ietf-languages
> > Subject: RE: Language X within scope of language Y
> >
> >
> > At 13:36 20/01/2005, L.Gillam wrote:
> > >[With tongue planted somewhere in cheek]
> >
> > don't gulp at the response or you may be hurt !
> >
> > >How does one register, get consensual agreement on, and
> > become allowed to
> > >use Peter Constable?
> > >Can Peter Constable only be used for tagging content, or
> > does he have a
> > >broader scope, and does he get a say in this?
> >
> > Never thought that THIS list is authoritative on nothing else
> > than its own
> > decisions?
> >
> > This is what I concede leaving you the choice of the default
> > value. So,
> > "fr-Latn-US-ietf_language_style-ietf_language at alvestrand.no"
> > is something
> > you say you want to default to fr-Latn-US (if I read through
> > the off topic
> > responses). If it pleases you so much to be the lingustic
> > center of the
> > world, there is no problem with that. But your delivery (the attached
> > content) will have to be very appealing if you want it to be
> > widely used.
> >
> > But
> > > > "fr-Latn-US-ietf_language_style-Peter_Constable"
> >
> > is something you need the OK of Peter to register. If he
> > wants to give you
> > authority on him. But frankly why would he want to register
> > it with you ?
> >
> > HA's Troll
> >
> >
> >
> >