Request: Add retired tag "eml" to the IANA registry

[John Cowan]

Randy Presuhn scripsit:

> In this case registration requests for variant subtags would be appropriate *if*
> someone needed to distinguish the various dialects.  Creating pre-deprecated
> records for those dialects, with preferred-values using the (not yet and we don't
> know if they ever will be requested) variant subtags seems a rather Rube
> Goldberg-like approach.  Creating pre-deprecated records for those dialects
> *without* preferred-values seems like an active disservice to whoever might
> someday need to identify those dialects.  I think we're better off leaving them
> out, and using the normal process to handle the variant subtag requests if and
> when they happen.  That would be much less confusing for folks not wrapped
> up in RFC 5646 aracana, and leaves open both the possibility that these
> could be handled as variants, or, if further consideration tips the balance
> once again, as language subtags.

Fair enough.

But what about the original request for 'eml'?  That is not a merger,
but a split: it represents the RA's decision that Emiliano-Romagnolo is
not a single language but two languages.  Here the denotation of 'eml'
is the union of the denotations of 'egl' and 'rgn'.  The 639-3/RA chose
not to make 'eml' a macrolanguage, and 639-5/RA chose not to make it a
collection code, so it was retired.  The result is that anything so tagged
cannot be correctly retagged unless it is re-examined to see if it is
'egl' or 'rgn'.  This is not a case like "eng-840" where a mechanical
transformation is all that is required.

I suppose we could create a 5-letter primary language tag for this case,
but we don't need to: we can instantiate the 639-3 code element as a
normal primary language subtag.  If we are not required to do this,
we are not forbidden from doing it either.

-- 
John Cowan   cowan at ccil.org
    "Mr. Lane, if you ever wish anything that I can do, all you will have
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        anything, you can put the telegram down as a forgery."