<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default"><pre style="white-space:pre-wrap;word-wrap:break-word"><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif">> </font><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:11px">But both </span><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:11px">subtags would still remain, and the extlang would still have a Prefix </span><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:11px">and Preferred-Value of 'ms' (the Prefix MUST NOT be removed -- 3.4).</span></pre>
<pre style="white-space:pre-wrap;word-wrap:break-word"><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif">Let's take a look at those cases.</font></pre><pre style="white-space:pre-wrap;word-wrap:break-word">Type: language
Subtag: jak
Description: Jakun
Added: 2009-07-29
Macrolanguage: ms</pre><div style="font-family:'times new roman',serif"><pre style="white-space:pre-wrap;word-wrap:break-word">Type: language
Subtag: ms
Description: Malay (macrolanguage)
Added: 2005-10-16
Suppress-Script: Latn
Scope: macrolanguage</pre><pre style="white-space:pre-wrap;word-wrap:break-word"><pre style="word-wrap:break-word;white-space:pre-wrap">Type: extlang
Subtag: jak
Description: Jakun
Added: 2009-07-29
Preferred-Value: jak
Prefix: ms
Macrolanguage: ms</pre></pre></div></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:'times new roman',serif">You're correct: ms-jak would continue to work in the future; it would not be unstable. I'd been remembering the first record; the Macrolanguage can change arbitrarily.</div>
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:'times new roman',serif"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:'times new roman',serif">(BTW, for Unicode language/locale codes this is moot, since they are always move extlangs to the base language position, as per the BCP47 canonicalization.)</div>
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<a href="https://google.com/+MarkDavis" target="_blank">Mark</a></div><div style="background-color:transparent;margin-top:0px;margin-left:0px;margin-bottom:0px;margin-right:0px"><i><br></i></div><div style="background-color:transparent;margin-top:0px;margin-left:0px;margin-bottom:0px;margin-right:0px">
<i>— Il meglio è l’inimico del bene —</i></div></font><div><div><font face="'times new roman', serif"><i><span style="font-style:normal"><i></i></span><i></i></i></font></div></div></div></div>
<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, Jan 21, 2014 at 4:53 PM, Doug Ewell <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:doug@ewellic.org" target="_blank">doug@ewellic.org</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div class="im">Mark Davis ☕ <mark at macchiato dot com> wrote:<br>
<br>
> By "unstable", I mean that a tag valid in version V becomes invalid<br>
> in V+1.<br>
<br>
</div>I think you're talking about the case where ISO 639-3/RA removes an<br>
encompassed language from its macrolanguage. However, I believe we would<br>
still have stability in that case.<br>
<br>
Imagine that the RA decided to remove Jakun ('jak') as a member of the<br>
macrolanguage Malay ('msa', or as we call it, 'ms'). In the Registry,<br>
the Macrolanguage field for primary and extended language subtags 'jak'<br>
would be removed, since that field tracks 639-3 exactly. But both<br>
subtags would still remain, and the extlang would still have a Prefix<br>
and Preferred-Value of 'ms' (the Prefix MUST NOT be removed -- 3.4). The<br>
extlang would probably be deprecated, but that does not affect validity<br>
(3.1.6).<br>
<br>
Even if 639-3 withdrew the code element 'jak' entirely -- say, if Jakun<br>
were determined to be a dialect of Malay, as Ethnologue suggests -- both<br>
primary and extlang subtags would be deprecated but still valid.<br>
<br>
Thus the extlang relationship doesn't really present any more<br>
instability than that of primary language subtags, and thus the validity<br>
rules didn't really have to allow mismatched language-extlang pairs to<br>
defend against instability.<br>
<br>
Did we discuss either of these scenarios in LTRU?<br>
<div class="HOEnZb"><div class="h5"><br>
--<br>
Doug Ewell | Thornton, CO, USA<br>
<a href="http://ewellic.org" target="_blank">http://ewellic.org</a> | @DougEwell <br>
<br>
</div></div></blockquote></div><br></div>