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<DIV><SPAN class=303380902-14022007><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2>Mark
wrote:</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=303380902-14022007><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff
size=2></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=303380902-14022007>>> The principle is the same for any
other language: do we presume that the code means only the modern variant, or
covers all historical variations? We need to get an answer for that; without
that answer, we can't know whether to accept or reject historic variant
proposals. </SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=303380902-14022007></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=303380902-14022007><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2>My
personal opinion is that ISO 639-3 subtags cover the "whole language" as
described; all of the language, every part of the language, written and spoken
and... historical. Even when there is an ISO 639-3 historical subtag
that covers part of it.</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=303380902-14022007><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff
size=2></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=303380902-14022007><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2>My
advice, accept urgent proposals for historic variants on the basis that they
will be deprecated when ISO 639-6 comes into being - assuming it is incorporated
within RFC4646bis or ter. Inform proposers of such variants that ISO 639-6
is currently being designed and if the need is not urgent delay until ISO 639-6
is published.</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=303380902-14022007><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff
size=2></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=303380902-14022007><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2>I
think this group needs to make a decision wrt ISO 639-6.
</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=303380902-14022007><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff
size=2></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=303380902-14022007><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2>Best
regards</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=303380902-14022007><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff
size=2></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=303380902-14022007><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff
size=2>Debbie</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV></SPAN>
<DIV><SPAN class=303380902-14022007><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff
size=2></FONT></SPAN> </DIV><BR>
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<FONT face=Tahoma size=2><B>From:</B> Mark Davis
[mailto:mark.davis@icu-project.org] <BR><B>Sent:</B> 14 February 2007
00:22<BR><B>To:</B> Lars Aronsson<BR><B>Cc:</B> ietf-languages@iana.org; LTRU
Working Group<BR><B>Subject:</B> [Ltru] Re: Macrolanguages, countries &
orthographies<BR></FONT><BR></DIV>
<DIV></DIV>Saying that it is not as important is, I agree, your prejudice.
Importance is in the eye of the beholder, and ISO 639-3 has 7,500 languages,
which make distinctions that to people concerned with Czech will be far less
important than the difference between old Czech and modern Czech.
<BR><BR><SPAN style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Moreover, one cannot fixate on the
exact example used.</SPAN> There are plenty of others, because very few
languages have "Old" variants in 639-3. The principle is the same for any
other language: do we presume that the code means only the modern variant, or
covers all historical variations? We need to get an answer for that; without
that answer, we can't know whether to accept or reject historic variant
proposals. <BR><BR>Mark<BR><BR>
<DIV><SPAN class=gmail_quote>On 2/13/07, <B class=gmail_sendername>Lars
Aronsson</B> <<A href="mailto:lars@aronsson.se">lars@aronsson.se</A>>
wrote:</SPAN>
<BLOCKQUOTE class=gmail_quote
style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: rgb(204,204,204) 1px solid">Mark
Davis wrote:<BR><BR>> Assume that old Czech is as different from modern
as fro is from fr.<BR><BR>But is this a real problem? How much
total literature is written<BR>and available in different variations of
Czech? My prejudice says <BR>that as a nation with a language and
literature of its own, Czech<BR>is about as young as Finnish, Norwegian or
Serbian, i.e. 19th<BR>century. Can you give any concrete examples
when not having a<BR>separate *code* for pre-renaissance Czech is a
practical problem? <BR><BR>Linguists of course have *names* for Swedish of
all ages, but I<BR>see no real use for having ISO or the IETF specify
language<BR>*codes*. I could be wrong, but if so please enlighten
and correct<BR>me. Nobody is going to translate OpenOffice or
Mozilla to the <BR>language spoken by vikings (Old Norse) or the Swedish
used during<BR>the Lutheran reformation (called New Swedish,
ironically).<BR><BR>Yes, there is now a branch of Wikipedia in Old
English<BR>(<A href="http://ang.wikipedia.org"> ang.wikipedia.org</A>), but
that is a rare exception. I don't expect<BR>this to happen in
other languages. Ang has now 744 articles,<BR>compared to the
11,000 articles of the Latin Wikipedia.<BR><BR>I'm scanning old books, and
I'm starting to see a practical <BR>problem with different orthographies and
spelling reforms, similar<BR>to those addressed with the IETF defined codes
for German de-1901<BR>and de-1996. Analogous to these codes, we
could perhaps find use<BR>for sv-1801, sv-1889, sv-1906, da-1775, da-1892
and da-1948, <BR>because we now have *significant amounts* of text online in
each<BR>of these language versions. But before 1775/1801 the
orthography<BR>of Swedish and Danish varies so heavily with each work, that
it<BR>becomes pretty much useless to try to identify more versions. <BR>And
before that time, there is also so small amounts of literature<BR>available,
that any automatic processing becomes
insignificant.<BR><BR><BR><BR>--<BR> Lars Aronsson (<A
href="mailto:lars@aronsson.se">lars@aronsson.se
</A>)<BR> Aronsson Datateknik - <A
href="http://aronsson.se">http://aronsson.se</A><BR>_______________________________________________<BR>Ietf-languages
mailing list<BR><A
href="mailto:Ietf-languages@alvestrand.no">Ietf-languages@alvestrand.no
</A><BR><A
href="http://www.alvestrand.no/mailman/listinfo/ietf-languages">http://www.alvestrand.no/mailman/listinfo/ietf-languages</A><BR></BLOCKQUOTE></DIV><BR><BR
clear=all><BR>-- <BR>Mark </BLOCKQUOTE></BODY></HTML>