Guernsey Jersey and Isle of Man ISO 3166-1 Codes

[Doug Ewell]

Debbie Garside <debbie at ictmarketing dot co dot uk> wrote:

> However, I would point out that the problem is not in getting
> notifications.
>
> In order to get GG JE and IM registered for use (as well as their
> alpha3 equivalents) as was called for on this list a few months ago,
> 4 Governments were involved in the creation and sanctioning of an
> eleven page document supporting the application! Plus two Standards
> bodies involved in delivering the goods! Just a small feat as Frank
> says ;-)

I understand now.  I was talking about the problem of finding out about 
new ISO or UN code elements, so we could register subtags based on them. 
You were talking about a different type of problem: persuading the 
standards organizations to approve new code elements on the basis of 
demand from the language tagging community.

I suspect, however, that your recent success in getting GG and IE and JE 
assigned will actually be a rare occurrence.  These entities were 
already assigned numeric code elements in UN M.49, and were very much an 
exception to the general rule about ISO 3166/MA taking its list of 
"countries" from UNSD; next week's assignments will simply remove that 
exception.

For ISO 3166/MA to assign a code element to an entity *not* already 
covered by UN M.49 would be quite another matter.  It would involve them 
in the political debate over "what is a country?" which they have 
generally handed off to the UN.  Getting such an assignment on the basis 
that someone needs it in a language tag seems even more remote, similar 
to their FAQ about not assigning a country code simply because someone 
wants it as a ccTLD.

--
Doug Ewell
Fullerton, California, USA
http://users.adelphia.net/~dewell/