Changing definition of German (was: Re: ISO 639-3 releases list of 2009 changes)

[John Cowan]

Leif Halvard Silli scripsit:

> It looks as if macrolanguages status is most often awarded to a code 
> which cover two or more "language instances" that aren't divided by a 
> border. 

By my count, there are 30 macrolanguages whose encompassed languages
are all spoken principally in the same country, and 29 that don't have
that property.  The 14 languages encompassed by 'zh', for example, are
all spoken principally in China, whereas the 30 languages encompassed by
'ar' are spread over 18 countries.  So no such conclusions can be drawn.


-- 
John Cowan  cowan at ccil.org  http://ccil.org/~cowan
If I have seen farther than others, it is because I am surrounded by dwarves.
        --Murray Gell-Mann