Appeal to ISO 639 RA in support of Elfdalian

[Doug Ewell]

Mark Davis wrote:

> It is best not to include phrases like "but that seems to be a
> political decision, not a linguistic one". Casting aspersions on
> someone's objectivity generally just pisses them off, which doesn't
> help to convince them.

I thought the RA pretty much conceded in their rejection letter that it 
was a political decision: "The vast majority of languages covered by 
Part 3 codes do not exist in a geographical or political context in 
which they fall under the 'roof' of a more dominant standardized 
language that already has a Part 2 code [i.e. unlike Elfdalian, which 
does exist in such a political context]."

> (Also one item: in CLDR, I suspect we're unlikely to support any new
> language tags that are >3 letters. We've already agreed not to support
> any 4-letter ones.)

I'm not sure why this is. Four-letter subtags are permanently reserved, 
so it makes sense not to bother with them, but how does this logic 
extend to 5- to 8-letter subtags? Then again, I know there is a CLDR 
ticket to ignore all non-generic variants, so perhaps CLDR doesn't mind 
diverging further from BCP 47.

--
Doug Ewell | http://ewellic.org | Thornton, CO 🇺🇸