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Hi, at first glance, I do not favor treating as extended languages any but those languages that essentially shared a single written form (as is the case with the [zh] group, the [ar] group; I am not sure this is the case with North and South Uzbek however ??? [but I could not make out the writing systems used in South Uzbek from the data at ethnologue--<BR>
<A href="http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=uzb">http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=uzb</A> <A href="http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=uzn">http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=uzn</A><BR>
<A href="http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=uzs">http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=uzs</A>]).<BR>So, I am not sure that either the Lithuanian-Samogitian pair or the Latvian-Latgalian pair should be treated as extended languages of the relevant macro-language anymore than [ekk] [vro] pair,<BR>but as has been pointed out, there does not seem to be a standard criteria for treating a language as an extended language,<BR>and in fact John is right, it could be that someone requesting a page in Latgalian would be perfectly happy to be served one in Latvian and would have no problems deciphering the Latvian page--<BR>
but making these extended languages would be at odds with what happened with [vro] and [ekk] and as Doug notes, we can't go back and change that.<BR>
John Cowan cowan at ccil.org <BR>Fri Dec 11 23:27:59 CET 2009 <BR>
Previous message: Criteria for languages <BR>
>CE Whitehead scripsit:<BR>
>> However, on a quick check, I note that [vro] was not made an extension<BR>>> language anyway it seems (?? but I am only basing this on Richard<BR>>> Ishida's list of macrolanguages<BR>
>It wasn't, and it's too late now. IMHO it should have been.<BR>Hmm.<BR>>> I did not get an accurate count but well over 100 of these are sign<BR>>> languages (what these have in common is they all use signs--I guess<BR>>> that's something of a common encoding system though the signs vary?);<BR>
>> The reasons for treating sgn as a macrolanguage are historical.<BR>Yes, I've been informed of this previously; I assume that making these extended languages allows all of these to be tagged with [sgn] as a prefix--so as to reflect how they were tagged prior to the creation of the various individual sign language codes??<BR>
>> the next largest group seems to be a family in the Austronesian language<BR>>> group with the prefix ms, followed by the various Arabic languages<BR>>> (prefix [ar]), the various Chinese languages (prefix [zh]) (both<BR>>> the Chinese and the Arabic are cases where the written forms of these<BR>>> languages is generally about identical), 2 Indo-European languages from<BR>>> India with the prefix [kok], North and South Uzbek,and Swahili .Best,<BR>
> ms = Malay, kok = Konkani.<BR>
> -- <BR>> John Cowan cowan at ccil.org <A href="http://ccil.org/~cowan">http://ccil.org/~cowan</A><BR>
Peter Constable petercon at microsoft.com <BR>Thu Dec 10 02:33:42 CET 2009<BR> <BR>
<BR>> You're trying to think of why it would be useful to use extended language subtags* in some general sense. I was simply trying to account for how they arose and the pre-existing practice that led to them <BR>>- which didn't necessarily arise because it made particular sense.<BR>
<BR>> There were long discussions as 4646bis was worked on debating ways <BR>> in which extlang subtags might be / are / are not useful, <BR>> and there was no clear consensus on that topic. <BR>
Sorry to hear the above,<BR>
<BR>
Sincerely,<BR>
C. E. Whitehead<BR><A href="mailto:cewcathar@hotmail.com">cewcathar@hotmail.com</A><BR>> We'll see how eager people are to take that up again now.<BR>
<BR>
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