The limit of language codes

CE Whitehead cewcathar at hotmail.com
Sun Feb 25 23:32:05 CET 2007


>
>Hi,
>
> > Hi, Lars, would
> > en
> > (if that were the only subtag available)
> > be sufficient to tag the English at the following link:
> >
> > http://www.georgetown.edu/labyrinth/library/oe/texts/a4.1.html
>
>What's relevant must depend on your application.  There certainly
>can exist applications where "en" is sufficient for Beowulf,
>because it is Old *English* as opposed to Latin or German.
>
>The web page you refer to (view source) is only marked with
><!DOCTYPE html SYSTEM "html.dtd"> and doesn't specify the content
>language at all, which apparently is quite sufficient for most web
>publishing.

(Right, many texts are not tagged for language, but many applications would 
work better if language tagging were used and the applications incorporated 
it in my opinion.) You can Google for "Hwæt! We Gardena in geardagum"
>without Google having to know what language this is.

Right, if you know some of the text, google or most search engines will 
bring the text up in the appropriate language normally (and will also bring 
up blogs quoting from it, etc.
So it depends on how many useless links you want your search engine to turn 
up.)
>
>In contrast, this page http://runeberg.org/swisornw/0013.html
>from the year 1536 specifies:
>
><meta name="DC.Language" scheme="ISO639-1"  content="sv" >
>
>Not that anybody cares, but it was fun to add the meta tag.
>
>What I was writing in my posting was that *I* currently have no
>need for changing that page to say "sv-1526" or something like
>that, but that "sv" does quite fine for my needs.  Maybe this was
>provocative to you?  Well, can you point out exactly *what*
>practical use I should have for such subtags?  I'm all ears.
You are?
I have a problem turning up 17th century French texts in the original 
language; when I search I am as likely to get Moliere in modern French as in 
17th century (Early Modern) French and I have to go through the links 
one-by-one, skip through the introduction, and read to see if the text meets 
my  needs.
What a pain!
>
> > I see that it is useful to tag the historical differences
> > because some readers want a modernized text, some do not, as I
> > think Dave Starner has pointed out as well.
>
>Can you give me a URL where a web page specifies Old English?
>The Old English Wikipedia http://ang.wikipedia.org/
>does indeed specify
><html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="ang" lang="ang" 
>dir="ltr">
>but are there any search engines or other applications that care?

Nope they do not; not so far; you are right.

But I do and would like more pages tagged so I could more easily get the 
language I am searching for.

For example, most Chaucer is in translation; which is just awful; I worked 
in a bookstore where I skimmed through a few copies and also skimmed through 
a high school translation.
It was all ruined!

It never compared to the Chaucer I knew (watch my spelling; this is from 
memory):

"A goode wyfe was there, of biside Bathe;
now she was somedele deafe, and that was scathe;
husbandes at the church door had she five,
withouten other companye in youthe,
but thereof needeth nat to speke as nouthe."

--C. E. Whitehead
cewcathar at hotmail.com


>
>
>--
>   Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
>   Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se
>
>
>   Project Runeberg - free Nordic literature - http://runeberg.org/

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