Criteria for languages
Doug Ewell
doug at ewellic.org
Thu Dec 10 05:04:16 CET 2009
CE Whitehead <cewcathar at hotmail dot com> wrote:
> However, what confuses me is why are some languages made extension
> languages?
>
> It makes sense to me to make a language an extension language of a
> macrolanguage if all the extension languages under that macrolanguage
> are generally written more or less identically (as is the case for the
> Chinese languages written in Chinese script; similarly in Arabic,
> standard Arabic is the only written form). Then it would make sense
> to allow users to tag these languages using both the macro-language
> code and the extension-language code--
>
> wherease if the languages appear different in writing, I don't see any
> reason to tag them with anything but their own unique code, ever.
See http://www.sil.org/iso639-3/scope.asp#M for the RA's definition of
"macrolanguage." Note that the writing system issue you mentioned is
one of the RA's considerations:
"There is a common written form used for multiple closely-related
languages. For instance, multiple Chinese languages share a common
written form."
The RA's criteria for macrolanguages are the only ones that matter, and
while we can debate whether a certain language or set of languages meet
the RA's criteria, I don't see the point in trying to develop our own
criteria.
--
Doug Ewell | Thornton, Colorado, USA | http://www.ewellic.org
RFC 5645, 4645, UTN #14 | ietf-languages @ http://is.gd/2kf0s
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