Applying for a Neo subtag

[Phillips, Addison]

> 
> > I'll be publishing a translation of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
> > in Neo (Los Aventuros de Alis in Marvoland) in Neo --
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo_(constructed_language) -- later this
> > year or sometime next, and Neo hasn't got an ISO 639 language tag. I
> > filed a request today with the ISO 639-3 authority for the tag "neu".
> > Failing that we would need a subtag to "art" here... I guess neo1961 would
> do.
> 
> A variant subtag for "art" would be inappropriate. Neo not a variant of "art",
> and in addition "art" is a collection code. Neo should have a primary language
> subtag. A primary language subtag with 5-8 characters would work if the
> request to add a three-character code for Neo to ISO 639-3 fails. (I guess
> regarding Neo as a variant of Esperanto or Ido is not appropriate, despite the
> similarities.)
> 
A primary language subtag would be appropriate if and only if ISO 639 had already rejected assigning a code to Neo. Until/unless that happens, it is probably inappropriate to register any code for the language in question. And then, as Kent Karlsson points out, a 5-8 character primary language subtag would be appropriate. Section 3.6 of RFC 5646 spells this out:

    Subtags MUST NOT be registered for languages
      defined by codes that exist in ISO 639-1, ISO 639-2, or ISO 639-3;
      that are under consideration by the ISO 639 registration
      authorities; or that have never been attempted for registration
      with those authorities.  If ISO 639 has previously rejected a
      language for registration, it is reasonable to assume that there
      must be additional, very compelling evidence of need before it
      will be registered as a primary language subtag in the IANA
      registry (to the extent that it is very unlikely that any subtags
      will be registered of this type).

Addison

Addison Phillips
Globalization Architect (Lab126)
Chair (W3C I18N, IETF IRI WGs)

Internationalization is not a feature.
It is an architecture.