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/
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