BCP 47

[Phillips, Addison]

The short answer is: because ISO 639-3 says so (or, rather, fails to say so).

In addition, “German” is not considered a macrolanguage, according to ISO 639, nor is ‘swg’ considered to be enclosed by it. BCP 47 does not indicate nor attempt to indicate all possible relationships between languages. Clearly, on some level, more “macrolanguage relationships” could be defined. But these generally do not convey additional utility for the uses to which language tags are mostly applied and the additional complexity of macrolanguages is something that generally this group tries to avoid.

Addison

Addison Phillips
Globalization Architect (Lab126)
Chair (W3C I18N WG)

Internationalization is not a feature.
It is an architecture.



From: ietf-languages-bounces at alvestrand.no [mailto:ietf-languages-bounces at alvestrand.no] On Behalf Of Benson Limketkai
Sent: Thursday, March 07, 2013 3:47 PM
To: ietf-languages at alvestrand.no
Subject: BCP 47

Hi,

Why doesn't Swabian have German as a macrolanguage?


See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swabian_German

%%

Type: language

Subtag: swg

Description: Swabian

Added: 2009-07-29
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