ON LANGUAGE NAMES /// RE: Results of Duplicate Busters Survey #2//Ainu

[Lang Gérard]

I do not know if my proposition solution is simpler, easier to understand or more arbitrary that ISO 639/RA-JAC's one
But, in my opinion, it is more like a "language name" that adding a country name after a language name.
Moreover, if we begin in this direction, how will we explain that we do not want to recognize language names like "arab (country name)" for every arab speaking country ?
Cordialement.
Gérard LANG 

-----Message d'origine-----
De : Doug Ewell [mailto:doug at ewellic.org] 
Envoyé : mardi 9 septembre 2008 14:10
À : ietf-languages at iana.org
Cc : Lang Gérard
Objet : Re: ON LANGUAGE NAMES /// RE: Results of Duplicate Busters Survey #2//Ainu

Lang Gérard <gerard dot lang at insee dot fr> wrote:

> My proposition would be:
> If we have a complete consensus, or even a sufficiently general 
> agreement, that there are effectively two distinct languages, one 
> japanese and one chiniese, could not we choose as language name, the 
> autonym "Ainu" (considered as a phonetisation of the japanese language 
> name ?) for the japanese language and, as language name, the autonym 
> "Aynu" (considered as a phonetisation or romanization of the chinese 
> language name ?) for the chinese language ?

But I repeat: in what way would this solution be simpler or easier to comprehend, or less arbitrary, than adding country names in parentheses, as ISO 639-3/RA has chosen to do?

--
Doug Ewell  *  Thornton, Colorado, USA  *  RFC 4645  *  UTN #14 http://www.ewellic.org http://www1.ietf.org/html.charters/ltru-charter.html
http://www.alvestrand.no/mailman/listinfo/ietf-languages  ^