[Ltru] Re: Macrolanguages, countries & orthographies

[Peter Constable]

From: Debbie Garside [mailto:debbie at ictmarketing.co.uk]

>> 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.

It's by no means obvious to me that it makes sense. That's using the ID that has very widely been associated with the modern language as the root for some extended set of historical connections of unclear scope. David has clearly demonstrated how that can lead to an absolute mess. If anything is appropriate as the root of some historical hierarchy, it is a protolanguage, or the concept of a collection based on historical ("genetic") associations. IDs for collection exist and capture such concepts. If you really want a hierarchy, something along the lines of Indo-European/Germanic/Middle-English might makes sense.



Peter