I think this is misinterpreting Randy's words. We do need to take into account what is being applied for, in order to make it as broadly applicable as possible. And often that involves recommending either narrowing or broadening the definition after discussion. And we <i>absolutely</i> need to take into account what is being asked for, and why.<br>
<br>Often the request is too narrow. I could request a subtag for en-US-socapgfr, which is for that variant of English spoken by people who were raised in Southern California, but moved out before the Great Freeway Renaming. Ken Whistler and I happen to share this variant -- we speak like Southern Californians (with the pen/pin and father/bother merges, etc), but don't use the distinctive pattern "the 101" to refer to freeways that arose in the south after we both left.<br>
<br>A non-trivial number of people use this variant; more speak it daily than the populations of over 95% of the primary languages in the iana registry (2σ, for geeks). Yet the first question this group should ask if I came in requesting this variant would be about the usage scenario. That would include whether a broader term would be more generally useful; and even if I needed the narrower term, we'd probably want to also register en-US-californi first, and make that a prefix.<br>
<br>And just because we register California American English doesn't mean that we immediately want to also register Pacific Northwest American English, and Southern American English, and Northeastern American English, and all the many, many subvariants of them. If we really tried to register every variant down to the specific variant that <i><b>someone, somewhere, *might* want</b></i>, that would take a huge amount of effort, just for American English. Multiply that by all the possible languages there are, and by all the linguists who would analyse variants in different ways, and you end up with a mind-boggling number of variants -- far, far beyond the ability of this group to handle.<br>
<br>Instead, the model is to try to reasonably satisfy each applicant's immediate needs, while making reasonable efforts to make sure that what is being asked for is broadly enough defined to be useful for the most people, and to add reasonable more-general prefixes if needed.<br>
<br clear="all">Mark<br>
<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Sep 10, 2009 at 01:42, Kent Karlsson <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:kent.karlsson14@comhem.se">kent.karlsson14@comhem.se</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<br>
Den 2009-09-10 08.17, skrev "Randy Presuhn" <<a href="mailto:randy_presuhn@mindspring.com">randy_presuhn@mindspring.com</a>>:<br>
<div class="im"><br>
> register a broad or narrow definition of a particular variant should be<br>
</div>> based on the registrant's needs, ...<br>
<br>
Registering a variant subtag is making the subtag available for anyone<br>
to use. If it is just the registrant's needs that are relevant, a<br>
private-use subtag is the appropriate thing to use, not registering<br>
anything.<br>
<br>
/kent k<br>
<div><div></div><div class="h5"><br>
<br>
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