Language Identifier List Comments, updated

[Frank Ellermann]

Tex Texin wrote:

> Informed and constructive comments are welcomed.

My constructive (but not very informed) 1.6 Euro cents:

DE: move yi to "no specific region".  Yiddish was used in many
    countries, today it's probably limited to the US and IL.

    "fy" may need a region.  There are AFAIK three Frisian
    dialects, West Frisian should be fy-NL.  East Frisian or
    Sater Frisian is not the same as North Frisian, therefore
    you'd have a problem with fy-DE.  For more details see
    also <http://www.geocities.com/Athens/9479/fries.html> or
    W: <http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=FRI>,
    N: <http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=FRR>,
    E: <http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=FRS>.

    Lower Sorbian (dsb) and Upper Sorbian (hsb) are listed in
    ISO 639-2, they are regional languages in Germany.  Maybe
    add dsb, hsb, and wen (Sorbian) to your DE row if that's
    the idea of your table.  Whatever wen is, AFAIK there are
    only two living versions of Sorbian (German: Wendisch),
    maybe wen is a now dead third language, or it's a superset
    of dsb and hsb.

    You have de-DK (German minority in Denmark), but no dk-DE
    (Danish minority in Germany).  AFAIK de-DK is just de, or
    one of the known variants like de-CH-1996 (new orthography
    without &szlig;)

    If that's the idea you don't need de-DK, de-BE, or dk-DE.
    Otherwise add the missing dk-DE, it's an official minority
    in Germany, there are even some special election rules in
    the relevant German state of Schleswig-Holstein for this
    group.

    You have already discussed de-LI.  The same reasoning makes
    sense for de-BE and de-LU.  And you have no de-PL, what is
    so special about de-LI ?  You also have no de-FR (Alsace),
    that's more important than de-BE, de-DK, de-LI, de-LU, or
    de-PL, because de-FR is at least a dialect.  See also the
    section about France (but ignore the dubious "639 gem") in 
    <http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=GSW>
  
    You also have no de-IT, maybe because it belongs to de-AT,
    of course not in a political sense, it's about languages.

    <http://www.ethnologue.com/show_country.asp?name=Germany>
    says that lb is also spoken in DE, and AFAIK that's true,
    but you probably don't want a dubious lb-DE, because it
    would be the same as lb-LU, lb-BE, or just lb.

    ISO 639-2 nds (low Saxon, German "plattdeutsch") is a very
    popular and official minority language in Germany, maybe
    also in the Netherlands, but they have more variants, see
    <http://www.ethnologue.com/show_family.asp?subid=768>

> The first row of the table represents languages that I have
> not yet identified as belonging to a region.

li (Limburgian) belongs to NL and maybe also to BE, compare
<http://li.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limburg>  Caveat: there's no li
in <http://www.ethnologue.com/language_index.asp?letter=L>

an (Aragonese) belongs to ES, see
<http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=AXX>

> The 3166 codes may not be fully up to date.

ISO 3166 committed net suicide with CS, R.I.P.  Bye, Frank

P.S.: "courtesy copy" because my reply probably won't make it
      to the corresponding mailing lists without subscription.