Scottish English

[JFC (Jefsey) Morfin]

At 18:36 22/10/2005, John Clews wrote:
> > At 00:05 22/10/2005, Keld Jørn Simonsen wrote:
>
> >>You are probably right, but I think that ISO 3166-2 looks like the
> >>most promising spec to use for further qualifying a territory, eg to
> >> specify a dialect.
>
>"JFC (Jefsey) Morfin" <jefsey at jefsey.com> replied:
>
> > May I ask you a silly question?
>
>Why don't you just read and understand the relevant standards, assess
>their strengths and limitations, and their suitability for different
>purposes, and then you dont' need to ask (or burden the list with) any
>silly questions.
>John Clews

Dear John,
This is a very interesting comment indeed. I will certainly take 
advantage from it.

But here the question is to know if it is suitable to systematically 
use (normalisation) a limited standard to address a possibly 
irrelevant need. Over History boarder lines have so many times been 
disputed and changed. Obviously this is not the case for islands. But 
there are places in the world where ISO 3166 referenced countries are 
not islands. There also are islands divided by a boarder, like Haiti, 
Saint Martin, etc. People have also migrated and invaded one another. 
Since we speak of English: we may remember Caesar and William.

The main point however is that this thread shows the today difficulty 
to reconciliate regional concepts, government names, globalisation 
and the real life. The 92 registrations accepted by this mailing list 
over a decade can rise questions, but also indicates this difficulty.

Just remember the basic Internet standardisation verification check: 
does the considered solution scale? Is the name of the legal 
authority over a territory an adequate or an artficial language 
identification element.
jfc