"mis" update review request

[Mark Davis]

You are right about number one; I concede that point fully -- I'd overlooked
that phrasing, sorry. That means that in ISO 639-2 the following are
collections:

mul             Multiple languages
art             Artificial (Other)

plus more normal cases:

afa             Afro-Asiatic (Other)
alg             Algonquian languages
...

and the following are not collections.

und             Undetermined
zxx             No linguistic content


I disagree with your point number two. The only reason that I can conclude
that "Miscellaneous Expenses" in a spreadsheet excludes the other listed
categories is that I know that everything listed is intended to be a
partition. The language codes clearly do not form a partition, since some
collections encompass other codes. The collection codes that are tagged with
(Other) are clearly meant to be the remainder of partitions, but for the
collections that are not tagged with (Other) there is no evidence that they
were intended to exclude other cases -- if anything, the contrary -- if they
had meant to be the remainder of partitions, they would have said (Other).

Moreover, while some may be perfectly willing to have stability go by the
wayside, it is extremely important to us, and that is one of the guiding
principles of and reasons for BCP 47. That means that if I validly and
correctly tag content with "mis", that application cannot be made incorrect
by any future change to BCP 47. That is why we can broaden the application
of codes, but cannot narrow them. There is no evidence in BCP 47 that I
cannot correctly tag the content "kind" with "mis". Now, of course, we all
know that we should tag with as much information as we can, so I *should*
tag that with "en" if I know I mean the English word, and "de" if I mean the
German, or possibly others. If I don't know which one it is, if my protocol
allows multiple tags I can use "en, de", and if not I am forced into a
choice between "mul" or choosing the 'most likely' language of the set.

Mark

On 4/13/07, John Cowan <cowan at ccil.org> wrote:
>
> Mark Davis scripsit:
>
> > Saying that mis is a collection is not breaking, but also not
> > substantiated by ISO 639-2.
>
> It's just unfathomable to me how you can get that reading of the standard.
>
> > http://www.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/normtext.html
>
> which says (section 4.1.1, second sentence):
>
>         The words *languages* or *(other)* as part of a language name
>         in the following tables may be taken to indicate that a language
>         code is a collective language code.
>
> > http://www.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/php/code_list.php
>
> which says (s.v. "mis")
>
>         Miscellaneous languages
>
> Note the word *languages*.  Game, set, and match (or Q, E, and D).
>
>
> > Saying that "which don't belong to any other collection" is a breaking
> > change, *and* is not substantiated by ISO 639-2 at the time the code was
> > added to the registry (or even now).
>
> Come, come.  Do you expect us, the members of this list, to suppose
> that when a spreadsheet contains the line "Miscellaneous expenses"
> you will find there charges for capital construction or salaries?
> You will not.  You will find expenses *that do not fit into any
> other category* on the spreadsheet.
>
> --
> One art / There is                      John Cowan <cowan at ccil.org>
> No less / No more                       http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
> All things / To do
> With sparks / Galore                     -- Douglas Hofstadter
>



-- 
Mark
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