LANGUAGE TAG REGISTRATION FORM

[John Cowan]

Mark Davis scripsit:

> Is there a distinction in orthography between each pair of the following?
> Unknown, yet 3066 permits all of them, since it is better to be safe than
> sorry.

[list of all possible national Englishes snipped]

Without attempting to undermine your point, IMHO the following list is the
outer limit of plausibility:

en-AG en-AI en-AS en-AU en-BB en-BM en-BN en-BS en-BW en-BZ en-CA en-CK
en-CM en-DM en-ER en-ET en-FJ en-FK en-FM en-GB en-GD en-GH en-GI en-GM
en-GU en-GY en-IE en-IL en-IO en-JM en-KE en-KI en-KN en-KY en-LC en-LR
en-LS en-MP en-MS en-MT en-MU en-MW en-NA en-NF en-NG en-NR en-NU en-NZ
en-PG en-PH en-PK en-PN en-PR en-PW en-RW en-SB en-SC en-SG en-SH en-SL
en-SO en-SZ en-TC en-TK en-TO en-TT en-UG en-US en-VC en-VG en-VI en-VU
en-WS en-ZA en-ZM en-ZW

These are the countries in which English is an official or national
language (according to the Ethnologue), and therefore which might
conceivably legislate on the subject.

> for az-*: AZ, IR, ...

This is the point you weren't making before: that there is a difference
between Azeri (in the same script) in Azerbaycan and in Iran.

> which is why a generative mechanism is much simpler.

So it is.  But what we are talking about here is what you need *before* a
generative mechanism is in place.  Consider, say, Chiru aka Chhori, which
under my current proposal would be labeled sit-cdf.  If this language
were commercially important, it would be worthwhile registering this tag.
("sit" is ISO 639-2 for "Sino-Tibetan (other)".)  Furthermore, Chiru
can be written in Latin or Bengali, so sit-cdf-latn and sit-cdf-beng
are also useful registrations.

But given that there is no significant body of Chiru speakers outside
India, do you also *need* to register sit-cdf-in, sit-cdf-latn-in,
and sit-cdf-beng-in for short-term purposes (i.e. until 3066bis comes out)?

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