LANGUAGE TAG REGISTRATION FORM: iu-Cans

John Cowan jcowan at reutershealth.com
Sat Feb 5 05:01:49 CET 2005


Peter Constable scripsit:

> I wonder if I could ask Michael or others to step aside from the debate
> of iu-Cans-CA / iu-Latn-CA for a second to comment on the other
> registrations I submitted -- or those that Mark submitted yesterday as
> well. I'd like to have an idea how many debates we may have on our
> hands, or on the other hand which of these I don't have to worry about.

Well, by my count there are 26 new tags proposed by you and Mark, which
I divide into four groups:  the xx-ssss ones (language and script), the
zh-yy-ssss (Chinese country and script), mn-yy-ssss (Mongolian country
and script), and the other xx-yy-ssss ones (other languages, country,
and script).  I'll discuss them separately.

The tags in the first group are bs-Cyrl, bs-Latn, iu-Cans, iu-Latn,
mn-Cyrl, mn-Mong, tg-Arab, and tg-Cyrl.  These all represent languages
(Bosnian, Inuktitut, Mongolian, and Tajik) with more than one script,
are closely analogous to tags already registered, and I think will be
non-controversial.

The Chinese script-and-country tags are zh-Hans-CN, zh-Hans-HK,
zh-Hans-MO, zh-Hans-SG, zh-Hans-TW, zh-Hant-CN, zh-Hant-HK, zh-Hant-MO,
zh-Hant-SG, and zh-Hant-TW.  These are all attempts to clean up the
long-standing mess of using zh-CN and zh-TW to mean zh-Hans and zh-Hant
respectively, and I don't think they represent any problem, since Mandarin
Chinese is indeed used in all these countries, some emphasizing one
script, some another, but with exceptions all round.

Likewise, the Mongolian script-and-country tags are mn-Cyrl-MN and
mn-Mong-CN, which nicely represent the situation with the language,
which uses two scripts in two countries.  I think that mn-Mong-MN is also
well justified, and I'm actually surprised that it isn't registered or
applied for.  (Mongolian script has had quite a revival in Mongolia in
the last decade or so.)

The remaining language-script-and-country tags are bs-Cyrl-BA, bs-Latn-BA,
iu-Cans-CA, iu-Latn-CA, tg-Arab-TJ, and tg-Cyrl-TJ.  I think these
all have the same problem we've been discussing with iu-Cans-CA: no
evidence available that the country codes are anything but redundant.
I'd say that those six are the only ones that will be problematic.

Summary: Reconsider bs-Cyrl-BA, bs-Latn-BA, iu-Cans-CA, iu-Latn-CA,
tg-Arab-TJ, and tg-Cyrl-TJ; consider proposing mn-Mong-MN.

-- 
"But the next day there came no dawn,           John Cowan
and the Grey Company passed on into the         jcowan at reutershealth.com
darkness of the Storm of Mordor and were        http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
lost to mortal sight; but the Dead              http://reutershealth.com
followed them.          --"The Passing of the Grey Company"


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