Updated! LANGUAGE TAG REGISTRATION FORM : es-americas

[Peter_Constable@sil.org]

On 06/05/2002 08:02:59 PM "Sean M. Burke" wrote:

>At 01:58 2002-06-06 +0100, Michael Everson wrote:
>>es-US is not one thing.
>Most things aren't.  en-GB, de-DE, ...

Quite so. Any "language" we recognise as an entity has variations in
multiple dimensions within it. Most of the variations are (more or less)
continua and are independent of one another, and so don't stand out, but
typically there are also coherent sub-communities that correlate with
clustered contrasts in these variations, which allow us to conventionally
recognise and perhaps even name sub-varieties The trick is having a basis
for deciding when one of these merits its own tag. Thus far, nobody has
come forward saying that they have an IT need to distinguish Texas Spanish
from New Mexico Spanish, etc.



- Peter


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Peter Constable

Non-Roman Script Initiative, SIL International
7500 W. Camp Wisdom Rd., Dallas, TX 75236, USA
Tel: +1 972 708 7485
E-mail: <peter_constable@sil.org>