Appeal to ISO 639 RA in support of Elfdalian

[Mark Davis ☕️]

Actually several people have. It is difficult to know what your final draft
is, but I've had several comments on the wording in the Wed, Apr 20, 2016
at 11:56 AM draft.

Notably:
The group responsible for the IETF language subtags is deeply concerned
=>
The registrar responsible
or
The registrar and some of the group responsible

===
The reason for this is that the group as a whole is not all behind the text
of that message. I am not against an appeal, but as I've said find the tone
of the letter counterproductive, and cannot thus support it. It appears
also that Peter is not supportive.

It *does* appear to me from
http://www-01.sil.org/iso639-3/cr_files/PastComments/CR_Comments_2015-046.pdf
that on balance one would consider Elfdalian to be a separate language
rather than a dialect of Swedish.*

However, the RA appears to have tried to consider the issue objectively,
and certainly left room for appeal. They wrote:

"The request to create the code [ovd] Övdalian is rejected at this point.
However, the Registration Authority is sympathetic to the request and notes
that the outcome of a future request might be different following further
clarification of decision-making principles in the standard that are
anticipated to come out of the current work item to produce a revision of
the text of the standard."

I'm afraid that a heavy-handed approach will result in, if anything, the
inverse of the desired solution.

Mark

(* But there are many statements used as evidence that are very
unconvincing. For example, "According to Melerska (2011) 50% of the
parents, ... consider Elfdalian to be an independent language." There are
many cases where people consider their dialect to be a language, as a
matter of (understandable) pride. That does not establish that it is: the
distinction between language and dialect need to be based on the objective
measure of intelligibility, not whether or not speakers "think of it" as a
language. With all due respect to Mencken, "American" is not a language,
for example; it is one of many varieties of English.)



Mark

On Sun, Apr 24, 2016 at 4:14 PM, Michael Everson <everson at evertype.com>
wrote:

> On 23 Apr 2016, at 18:59, Shawn Steele <Shawn.Steele at microsoft.com> wrote:
>
> > Substantiation?  I'm not sure how you substantiate a hypothetical.
>
> With some sort of hypothetical crystal-ball example.
>
> > Additionally, some have expressed concern that the tone of poorly chosen
> letter could be off-putting to them, which could cause them to become more
> defensive of their position, &/or create a feeling of ill-will that could
> make it harder to work with them in the future.
>
> I don’t find the letter to be particularly belligerent, just realistic. No
> one who has expressed concern has offered alternative text, and those who
> have favoured the letter have contributed to the text.
>
> Michael
> _______________________________________________
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> Ietf-languages at alvestrand.no
> http://www.alvestrand.no/mailman/listinfo/ietf-languages
>
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