Title of ISO 639-5 (was: Re: Ietf-languages Digest, Vol 74, Issue 1)
Doug Ewell
doug at ewellic.org
Sun Feb 22 19:43:47 CET 2009
Anthony Aristar <aristar at linguistlist dot org> wrote:
> The official term for 639-5 is, after all: "Codes for the
> Representation of Names of Languages. Part 5: Alpha-3 code for
> language families and groups" If what John says is true -- and I am
> quite willing to believe it is -- then this title is not merely
> misleading, but erroneous. This is not, it seems, what these codes
> are actually doing.
It's well known that linguists and other experts disagree, sometimes
forcefully, as to the correct ways to classify languages. But I think
it is a stretch to say that ISO 639-5 does not in fact encode "language
families and groups," even if the families and groups may be considered
kind of a mish-mash.
ISO 639-5 defines the terms "language family" and "language group" and
does not make any claim that these definitions, or its classification
system, are the only ones possible.
http://www.loc.gov/standards/iso639-5/normtext.html
--
Doug Ewell * Thornton, Colorado, USA * RFC 4645 * UTN #14
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