[Ltru] Re: Macrolanguages, countries & orthographies

Debbie Garside debbie at ictmarketing.co.uk
Wed Feb 14 16:27:43 CET 2007


David Starner wrote:

> As a user of en, enm and ang, I don't like that one bit. fr 
> and en are more mutually intelligible then ang and en, and I 
> don't see any use in labelling ang as en.

But I see people who are looking for a language subtag to denote Old English
using English as a starting point in a hierarchical system such as ISO
639-6; makes sense to me.

> Furthermore, if ang 
> can validly be labeled en, it can also be validly labeled 
> sco, adding another layer of complexity.

I note Ethnologue have classified sco under English!  But you are right, to
be able to link languages by mutual intelligibility requires a
multi-parent/child relationship system.   That's not what I am advocating at
the moment (emphasis on the word moment :-)).  

> It's one thing to wait for ISO 639-3, which is clearly 
> available in a late draft, but something that is "currently 
> being designed" is not something I feel it's reasonable to 
> expect people to wait for.

We have waited some 5 years for ISO 639-3.  I think for the last year people
have been holding off on registration requests because of it.  ISO 639-6 is
due for publication in early 2008 but I don't think people should have to
wait if their need is urgent; register variants via RFC4646.  I have no
problem with that.

Best regards

Debbie


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