an old item: es-americas

[Tex Texin]

I would support something like this. I am not sure if "dialect" is the right
term, but there is a clear need to identify and articulate that a set of text
is purposed for certain markets, without declaring that it is a well-described,
clearly defined "language".

That said, it might still be hard to get agreement as to which markets are
adequately represented.
Microsoft uses Spanish that is adequate for all Spanish markets (I think).
Other companies use a Spanish they intend to be adequate for Latin America, but
not Mexico or Spain.
Some have a version they use for Latin America including Mexico, but not Spain
(or rather European Spanish).

Maybe we need a mechanism that allows text to be earmarked as suitable for a
collection of markets, with a way to identify which
markets/regions/languages/dialects are considered.

That way a vendor could say I have es-collection and it can be used for es with
markets x,y,z and some other language or language collection is used for a, b,
and c.

I agree with Michael that there is a problem in creating a tag for something
which is ill-defined. 

On the other hand there is a legitimate and growing business need to properly
label text and its intended usage. If that need isn't addressed, text will be
mis-tagged and software will make suboptimal and likely incorrect choices. This
will drive vendors to non-standard alternatives that will undermine
interoperability.

We can't ignore this problem.

tex


Jon Hanna wrote:
> 
> > I grant that it's an underspecified and written-only dialect, but so is
> > modern standard Arabic (some political speeches notwithstanding).
> 
> Maybe if a large enough number of people consider it to be a dialect we should
> reflect that, even if they're arguably wrong (even if they're provably wrong).
> 
> --
> Jon Hanna
> <http://www.hackcraft.net/>
> "
it has been truly said that hackers have even more words for
> equipment failures than Yiddish has for obnoxious people." - jargon.txt
> _______________________________________________
> Ietf-languages mailing list
> Ietf-languages at alvestrand.no
> http://www.alvestrand.no/mailman/listinfo/ietf-languages

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Tex Texin   cell: +1 781 789 1898   mailto:Tex at XenCraft.com
Xen Master                          http://www.i18nGuy.com
                         
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