Language Subtag Registration Form: variant "signed"

[John Cowan]

Peter Constable scripsit (in several messages):

> I have no particular reason to rush signed languages in IETF language
> tags. I very much wish you hadn't rushed a bunch of tags through five
> years ago.

They were needed then (according to Michael) and no less now.  Hindsight
is 20/20, after all, but the 3066bis model was not even a gleam in anyone's
eye in 2001.

> I know of no reason for the signed languages identified in Ethnologue
> 15 not to be included in ISO 639-3.

I agree.  Which is not to say that there's no reason to treat them specially
in 3066ter.

> We could deprecate existing grandfathered tags to be superseded by sanctioned
> generated tags if we felt it was the right thing to do. 

Yes we could, technically.  I think it would be improper, though.

> I would recommend that we not continue using region IDs for what is *language*
> identity. I'm willing to live with "sgn-..." since 20+ registered tags is a
> non-insignificant precedent, but there's absolutely no good reason for abusing
> region IDs when we have an alternative.

I'm not sure whether you're proposing at this point that we replace sgn-US
with sgn-ase, or merely that we don't introduce any more such tags.
I can live with the latter, but not the former.

> AFAIK, there is no such thing as "national sign languages". There are
> signed languages that are widely used in a given country, or signed
> languages that are most familiar to the dominant culture in a country,
> but I know of no case of signed languages recognized as a national
> language.

Well, no.  But then I don't believe in compositional semantics, either. :-)

> - we attribute a particular status to one language and attribute a
> unique association with national identity that may not be warranted or
> may not be permanent
> 
> - we significantly raise the potential for confusion in cases where
> there are multiple signed languages spoken in a given country
> 
> - we leave no room to use region IDs to distinguish regional
> sub-language varieties of signed languages that may be spoken in
> multiple countries

I concede all these points, but I don't think they trump existing
registrations.

> It is decidedly abusing the intended range of semantics for the
> different kinds of sub-tags that can constitute a tag. This is just bad,
> bad, bad; and just because we made the mistake in some existing cases it
> doesn't make it a good idea to continue to make the mistake in further
> cases. I said this in October 2001, and I'm only more strongly convinced
> of it than I was then.

Again, this is hindsight.  Nobody knew in 2001 what the "intended range
of semantics" was for country subtags.

-- 
So that's the tune they play on                 John Cowan
their fascist banjos, is it?                    cowan at ccil.org
        --Great-Souled Sam                      http://www.ccil.org/~cowan