ISO 639-3 2011 changes: ikt

[Philip Newton]

On 27 July 2012 21:12, Doug Ewell <doug at ewellic.org> wrote:
> -----
>
> LANGUAGE SUBTAG MODIFICATION
> File-Date: 2012-xx-xx
> %%
> Type: language
> Subtag: ikt
> Description: Inuinnaqtun
> Description: Western Canadian Inuktitut
> Added: 2009-07-29
> Macrolanguage: iu
> %%
>
> -----
>
> LANGUAGE SUBTAG REGISTRATION FORM
>
> 1. Name of requester: Doug Ewell
> 2. E-mail address of requester: doug at ewellic.org
> 3. Record Requested:
>
>   Type: language
>   Subtag: ikt
>   Description: Inuinnaqtun
>   Description: Western Canadian Inuktitut
>   Macrolanguage: iu
>
> 4. Intended meaning of the subtag:
>
> 5. Reference to published description of the language (book or article):
>
> 6. Any other relevant information:
>
>   This registration tracks a change made to ISO 639-3 effective
>   2012-02-06, adding "Inuinnaqtun" as the reference name for the
>   existing code element 'ikt'. This name change does not affect the
>   existing macrolanguage association with Inuktitut ('iu').
>
>   For more information on the ISO 639-3 change, refer to
>   http://www.sil.org/iso639-3/cr_files/639-3_ChangeRequests_2011_Summary.pdf
> .
>
> -----

Are names listed alphabetically?

Because the impression I got from reading
http://www.sil.org/iso639-3/cr_files/639-3_ChangeRequests_2011_Summary.pdf
is that "Inuinnaqtun" was added as an additional reference name; I
would have expected it to be added at the end of the list in the
subtag registry entry.

Also, I just realised this may be a grammatical misunderstanding; when
you said that "Inuinnaqtun" was added as _the_ reference name, I
presumed that this meant that the first name in the list was special
and that other names are synonyms, slightly less than equal to the
first one which is "the reference name" for a given language.

But since the change requests summary says that asterisks indicate
addition "as an additional reference name", I presume that all of the
names labelled "Description" in the subtag registry are "reference
names" in the ISO sense. So perhaps "...adding "Inuinnaqtun" as a
reference name..." would be better (adding it as _a_ reference name
rather than as _the_ reference name).

Though where in the order it gets added depends on whether the list of
names has an order and if so, which. (Alphabet? Some sort of priority
of aptness, with the first being somehow "best" and the others
synonyms in decreasing order of "goodness"? Chronological order of
addition to the registry entry?)

Cheers,
Philip
-- 
Philip Newton <philip.newton at gmail.com>