Criteria for languages

[Doug Ewell]

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 ­