Variants of Japanese (was: Re: Unilingua)

[Harald Tveit Alvestrand]

--On søndag, september 18, 2005 21:03:26 -0400 "John.Cowan" 
<jcowan at reutershealth.com> wrote:

>> It makes more sense to me to recommend for tagging purposes that people
>> be consistent and use region always, to reflect as closely as possible
>> the author's language and/or the intended audience, and for matching
>> purposes to be as least restrictive as needed. So tag ja-JP, but match
>> on ja (or "ja-JP, ja").
>
> I don't have a problem with that when it comes to well-known languages.
> For obscure ones, national variants are pretty unlikely.

wish there was a positive correlation between obscurity and homogenity.... 
the rather obscure sami language has 4 generally recognized variants, none 
of which has an area of use that precisely conforms to the national 
boundaries of the region.

I won't even mention Norwegian.