Last call: Latvian (and Bontok) extlang subtags

Michael Everson everson at evertype.com
Mon Feb 8 16:13:36 CET 2010


On 8 Feb 2010, at 14:18, Doug Ewell wrote:

> I have given you criteria.  I concede that they require you to  
> estimate
> how frequently 'lv' has been used to tag Standard Latvian content and
> Latgalian content, and that concrete numbers aren't available to you.

And how am I to do this? By means of crystal ball?

I do not *know* how frequently "lv" has been used to tag Standard  
Latvian content and Latgalian content. How could I?

A report from the Library of Congress has only 61 records in which  
Latgalian content *in all*.

That is very, very few indeed. So I should just reject both of the  
requests, by the criteria which you have explained to me.

>> So in the absence of any meaningful help for the Reviewer here, fine,
>> I'll just believe the quantitative assessment given by you and John.
>> There's nothing else I can do about it.
>
> Clearly we need a better model for the future.  ISO 639-3/RA was also
> asked (2009-039) to make Low Saxon into a macrolanguage,  
> encompassing 10
> existing individual languages and one newly created one.  The RA
> rejected that proposal, but what if they had accepted it, or choose to
> accept it if repackaged in the future?  We would have to make the same
> decision, and I predict the question of whether 'nds' has been widely
> used to refer to these 11 languages would be even more controversial.

I am rather annoyed, Doug, that you have not responded to what I  
actually said, but instead launched into a discussion about Low Saxon.

Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com/


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