[Ltru] Re: Macrolanguages, countries & orthographies

Debbie Garside debbie at ictmarketing.co.uk
Wed Feb 14 22:17:01 CET 2007


IMHO, the hierarchy should look something like this (missing a few bits
out):

Indo-European
- Germanic
-- West Germanic
--- Anglo-Frisian/North Sea Germanic
---- Anglic 
----- Olde English/Anglo Saxon
----- Middle English
------ Early Northern Middle English
------- Early Scots Northern Middle English
-------- Middle Scots
--------- Modern Scots
------ Early Southern and S Western Middle English
------ Early Midland and S Eastern Middle English
------- Early Modern English
-------- Modern Standard English

Has the ISO 639 ID been used specifically for just modern? How have people
tagged early scots? sco? Historically (in language tagging terms) has en
always been used for modern?   I am not saying you are wrong, but decisions
need to be made wrt these issues.  Do  all ISO 639-1/2/3 ID's represent the
modern language (written and spoken or just written?) unless historic is
specifically stated?   Questions questions questions... A veritable can of
worms.

Best regards 

Debbie



> -----Original Message-----
> From: Peter Constable [mailto:petercon at microsoft.com] 
> Sent: 14 February 2007 18:30
> To: ietf-languages at iana.org; 'LTRU Working Group'
> Subject: RE: [Ltru] Re: Macrolanguages, countries & orthographies
> 
> 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
> 
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> 
> 





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