Language Subtag Registration Form: variant "signed"
Michael Everson
everson at evertype.com
Mon Feb 27 10:45:31 CET 2006
At 15:39 -0800 2006-02-26, Peter Constable wrote:
> > 1) Do Sign Language tags *have* to be rushed?
>
>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.
Five years ago I was responding to a user request for a number of tags.
> > 2) Do the Sign Language tags in 639-3 *have* to be accepted at this
> > stage, or is there scope for further work on this (by pulling them
> > out before publication)?
>
>I know of no reason for the signed languages identified in
>Ethnologue 15 not to be included in ISO 639-3.
I think that Sign Languages work differently and interact differently
with spoken languages than spoken languages interact with one
another. I think they ought to have their own namespace (e.g., sgn-),
not just be lumped in with 6000 other spoken languages. I think the
Ethnologue taxonomy doesn't handle "signed spoken languages" well,
and I think that all of those three-letter codes should be pulloed
from 639-3 until we can discuss and clarify the matter with Gallaudet
etc. They can always been added to 639-3 in due course. But I think
the whole area needs another serious look. (And I'm willing to put
the RFC 3066 tags on the table if the 639-3 tags are.)
--
Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com
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