Scottish English

John.Cowan jcowan at reutershealth.com
Fri Oct 21 21:32:33 CEST 2005


Harald Tveit Alvestrand scripsit:

> >In the USA there are a number of states, and there are well-known
> >abbreviations for the states. The same in Canada, for its provinces.
> >India and China and Brasil and Germany and Switzerland and probably many
> >more have such subdivisions of their nation. Great Britain too.
> >I even think there is an ISO 3166 part for such subdivisions, but I am
> >not sure of the part number, nor whether the standard has been finalized.
> 
> ISO 3166-2. The code for Scotland is "SCT".

Unfortunately, the ISO 3166-2 codes are stable neither in principle nor in
practice, neither in code nor in referent.  The U.S. is a special case;
its states are not mere subdivisions but are mutually sovereign entities
whose existence and territorial bounds are constitutionally guaranteed.
Other countries can and do revamp their subdivisions at will, and
ISO 3166-2 serves as a mere registry of the code elements and subdivisions
in effect at present.  Furthermore, its contents are not freely available.

So ISO 3166-2 is completely useless for language tagging.

-- 
Possession is said to be nine points of the law,		John Cowan
but that's not saying how many points the law might have.	jcowan at reutershealth.com
	--Thomas A. Cowan (law professor and my father


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