LANGUAGE SUBTAG REGISTRATION FORM: Eastern Armenian

Debbie Garside debbie at ictmarketing.co.uk
Fri Sep 1 19:30:06 CEST 2006


Hi

I agree with Addisons post in most areas.  However, I think that the
discussion on generic terms (eastern, western, northern etc..) could be
quite endless.  

Don has on several occasions asked how this will impact on the possible
inclusion of ISO 639-6 and I think that any real discussion with regard to
dialects would necessarily have to include discussion of ISO 639-6.  I think
that to have this discussion at this stage would be counter productive in
facilitating the tags that Mark has requested within an acceptable
timescale.  

I would opt for non-generic tags in this instance and take this discussion
to the LTRU (once re-chartered) as part of the discussion surrounding
dialects and ISO 639-6.  

I think that Michael's comment wrt "en-western" "en-eastern" highlight the
probable problems that would be encountered by the introduction of such
generic terms and one has to think of the precedents being set here.  

Peter's original suggestion is perhaps the way forward; it is not beautiful
John but it does the job. Thus I would propose the following:

----

hyeast
hywest

----

Best regards

Debbie

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ietf-languages-bounces at alvestrand.no 
> [mailto:ietf-languages-bounces at alvestrand.no] On Behalf Of 
> Addison Phillips
> Sent: 01 September 2006 17:28
> To: Michael Everson
> Cc: ietf-languages at alvestrand.no
> Subject: Re: LANGUAGE SUBTAG REGISTRATION FORM: Eastern Armenian
> 
> > 
> > That argument doesn't take you very far, given BYZANTINE MUSICAL 
> > SYMBOL DIESIS APLI DYO DODEKATA.
> 
> I think the argument about the form of the subtag is not very 
> useful in its present form. With proposals for "eastern" and 
> "western", the issue we face is, in my opinion, quite 
> important and should be dealt with
> directly:
> 
> 1. We have historical precedent for subtags restricted to a 
> specific dialect. Witnesss 'nedis' and 'rozaj' in the current 
> registry.
> 
> 2. We do not have a history of registering "generic" subtags. 
> Although 'eastern' and 'western' would initially indicate 
> Armenian dialects, it is quite clear that these subtags could 
> have additional Prefix fields added which would indicate 
> other, unrelated, dialects of other languages.
> 
> It seems clear to me that there are distinct entities of some 
> sort that Mark needs to tag. The question before us is 
> whether we should expand on precedent and register 
> semi-generic subtags or continue the existing practice of 
> registering very specific subtags for very specific purposes.
> 
> Personally, I do not support truly generic subtags ('eastern' 
> with no Prefix at all), since I think those subtags would 
> lead to undesirable tag choices and confusion about tag choice.
> 
> I therefore think that, given current practice, we should not 
> register 'eastern' and 'western' at this time, but we should 
> register subtags (perhaps Michael's suggested ones) with the 
> "same meaning" to meet Mark's needs.
> 
> I think the argument about how Mark has chosen to split/lump 
> dialects is a chimera: nothing says that competing subtags 
> could not be registered that split Armenian in a "different 
> direction" (possibly for a different application).
> 
> If Mark feels that semi-generic subtags are actually 
> necessary and that Armenian dialects are just a useful test 
> case, then I think we should have a full-fledged discussion 
> of what the guidelines ought to be for their adoption and use.
> 
> The use case for semi-generic subtags, in my mind, is not 
> proved by a single case. What we need are four or five 
> languages (exact number not
> important) that indicate how eastern/western or 
> northern/southern would work in practice.
> 
> Also: what happens if we have "tlh-western" and a new 
> subdialect "fooish" is registered. Do we do 
> "tlh-western-fooish" or "tlh-fooish"?
> 
> Best Regards,
> 
> Addison
> 
> --
> Addison Phillips
> Globalization Architect -- Yahoo! Inc.
> 
> Internationalization is an architecture.
> It is not a feature.
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