registry vs. extensions...

Doug Ewell dewell at adelphia.net
Sat Oct 25 16:10:30 CEST 2003


<han dot steenwijk at unipd dot it> wrote:

> "Language" and "dialect" are to a great extent socially motivated
> notions. Maybe ISO 639 should stress the point that they encode
> language names, where language means "any linguistic variety that is
> put to use in various spheres (colloquial, official, ceremonial) and
> boasts a body of written documentation produced by native speakers".

ISO 639 encodes "codes for the representation of names of languages,"
not the language names themselves.  It's a subtle but important
distinction.

-Doug Ewell
 Fullerton, California
 http://users.adelphia.net/~dewell/



More information about the Ietf-languages mailing list