Scottish English

[Peter Constable]

> From: ietf-languages-bounces at alvestrand.no [mailto:ietf-languages-
> bounces at alvestrand.no] On Behalf Of Harald Tveit Alvestrand


> standard gripe....
> 
> from the material available from ISO 639, there's no way of telling
for
> sure whether "sco" ("Scots") refers to a language related to English
or a
> language related to Gaelic.

Gary Simons and I identified this as an issue for ISO 639 in a paper we
presented back in 2000. On the one hand, you don't want to make the
descriptors given for languages a normative part of the standard, but on
the other hand, an identifier is meant to identify the concept of a
particular language, and it's important to make clear in some way what
the intended denotee language is. It's why the Web site for ISO 639-3
will have links to other sources that document this.


Peter Constable