Phonetic orthographies

[Frank Ellermann]

Gerard Meijssen wrote:

> The problem of the RFC 4646 is imho, that it does not appreciate
> that ISO-639-3 makes what are considered languages under the
> previous codes macro-languages.

RFC 4646 doesn't do anything at all with 639-3 yet, it reserves
the <extlang> syntax for future use with 639-3 in a 4646bis.

> My appreciation of the RFC 4646 is very much that it aims to
> preserve backwards compatibility.

Yes, and it could of course not adopt a not yet existing 639-3 :-)

 [old codes]
> have been ditched with reason in the ISO-639-3 and the insistence
> to preserve the outdated codes will imho prove to more of a 
> hindrance than of a benefit when you want to make the Internet 
> more multi lingual. It would have been better to allow for the use
> of the old codes and advise as best practice to move to the later
> codes when and where practical.

Did you look at the 4645bis draft ?  You can still determine the 
direction of a future 4646bis wrt 639-3 on the <ltru.ietf.org> list.
Or other updates of RFC 4646 you'd like. 

> Indicating orthographies by date is not safe because in Dutch for 
> instance we have an official orthography, "het groene boekje" and
> an unofficial one, "de witte lijst"

You can register variants "groene" and "witte" with prefix "nl" under
RFC 4646 rules.  BTW, the existing 19xx de-variants were registered
under 3066-rules, nothing forces you to use years for purposes where
that makes no sense.    
 
> I am a member of the Wikimedia Foundation language subcommittee.

Have fun with <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:Sttnw> ;-)

Frank