One language, one subtag (was: Re: Ietf-languages Digest, Vol 50, Issue 18)

[Ciarán Ó Duibhín]

Doug Ewell wrote:
> If I want to request content in Old English OR Middle English OR Modern
> English, that doesn't make all three of those "the same language."

But one of the reasons for suggesting a French macrolanguage is so that
texts which fall on or near a language borderline (e.g. that between frm and
fr), and which are not clearly one thing or the other, don't have to be
arbitrarily tagged as one thing or the other.  And further that texts which
have a clear linguistic identity as frm or fr but which fall chronologically
on the wrong side of the borderline won't have to be wrongly tagged from the
linguistic viewpoint.  In other words, reality is not as simple as ISO 639's
(or any other) list of languages, which needs to be extended using the
available mechanisms, one of which is macrolanguages.  This is a practical
issue, not a fanciful academic speculation.

Ciarán Ó Duibhín