New item in ISO 639-2 - Zaza
Doug Ewell
dewell at adelphia.net
Wed Aug 23 16:15:09 CEST 2006
Peter Constable <petercon at microsoft dot com> wrote:
> Before jumping to conclusions, you need to remember that all you have
> seen of the code table for ISO 639-3 is *draft*.
That's true, but it's been relatively stable for over a year, and with
the publication of 639-3 reportedly just a few months away, it's not
exactly a tabula rasa. It's been through some review.
>> I guess we will add a subtag corresponding to this new 639-2 code
>> element,
>
> Is there a choice at present?
Not really. Section 3.3 says the Reviewer must "determine whether [a
change to ISO 639] conflicts with existing registry entries," which it
does not. If the Registry included the 639-3-based subtags, which is
planned for 3066ter, then the situation might be different.
> There will be indeed a change in the 639-3 code tables: macrolanguage
> mappings from zza to dlq and kiu will be added.
OK, so the right thing to do in this case is add "zza" (as we must) and
ignore the 639-3 situation for now. By the time we have to care, for
3066ter purposes, everything will be made right in 639-3.
> This is not a "mismatch" as you had in mind. It is a new
> macro-language entity for which the component members were already in
> 639-3. That's a possible scenario that will have to be considered in
> developing 3066ter, but I don't think it is a particularly complicated
> problem to deal with.
But the macrolanguage in 639-3 doesn't just create itself, does it?
Suppose -- this is my whole point really -- suppose this happened in the
3066ter era. The Registry would contain primary language subtags "diq"
and "kiu". Now suppose 639-2 adds "zza" and we need to add it as well.
We would have to reclassify "diq" and "kiu" from primary to extended,
right?
Actually, it may be a blessing in disguise that this use case occurred
before we start working on 3066ter.
--
Doug Ewell
Fullerton, California, USA
http://users.adelphia.net/~dewell/
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