Montenegrin

Peter Constable petercon at microsoft.com
Wed Jun 16 20:47:00 CEST 2010


From: ietf-languages-bounces at alvestrand.no [mailto:ietf-languages-bounces at alvestrand.no] On Behalf Of Leif Halvard Silli

> So what is it that makes 'sh' a 'macrolanguage'? 

By definition, a language entry in ISO 639-3 is said to have a scope of "macrolanguage" if it is treated in some contexts as a discrete, individual language while it also is deemed to encompass two or more varieties that, in some other context, are themselves considered to be discrete, individual languages. (Other varieties may also be encompassed, but that has no bearing. 

Formally, in ISO 639-3 a language entry is deemed to be a macrolanguage if its scope property is set to "macrolanguage". (Note: entries in ISO 639-3 can have either "macrolanguage" or "individual language" scope.) A concomitant condition is that there are macrolanguage mappings defined in ISO 639-3 from that language to two or more entries in ISO 639-3 that have scope of "individual language".



Peter


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