One language, one subtag

[Doug Ewell]

Ciarán Ó Duibhín <ciaran at oduibhin dot freeserve dot co dot uk> wrote:

> But one of the reasons for suggesting a French macrolanguage is so 
> that texts which fall on or near a language borderline (e.g. that 
> between frm and fr), and which are not clearly one thing or the other, 
> don't have to be arbitrarily tagged as one thing or the other.

I understand this goal.  I'm not sure whether macrolanguages as defined 
by ISO 639-3 are intended to solve problems like this.  I think the JAC 
may see a fundamental difference between the concepts:

"Cantonese and Mandarin are the same language for some purposes, and 
different languages for other purposes."

and:

"Middle French and Modern French are the same language for some 
purposes, and different languages for other purposes."

This is a decision for the ISO 639-3 people to make, not us.  If they 
add such a macrolanguage, we will of course add the corresponding 
primary language subtag to the Registry, because that is what we do.

> And further that texts which have a clear linguistic identity as frm 
> or fr but which fall chronologically on the wrong side of the 
> borderline won't have to be wrongly tagged from the linguistic 
> viewpoint.

This is not an issue.  If someone wrote or spoke Middle French in 1700, 
or last week, it is still Middle French by the nature of the language. 
Middle French is the language, the "version of French" if you will, that 
was generally spoken within a certain time frame, but it is not 
constrained to appear only within that time frame.

A similar misconception appears to exist over region subtags.  The 
language variety I speak is essentially en-US, not because I reside in 
the US but because that is what I speak.  If I travel to the UK or 
Australia or South Africa, and speak the same language variety (at least 
for the first few days), it is still en-US; it has not become en-GB or 
en-AU or en-ZA solely on the basis on venue.

> In other words, reality is not as simple as ISO 639's (or any other) 
> list of languages, which needs to be extended using the available 
> mechanisms, one of which is macrolanguages.  This is a practical 
> issue, not a fanciful academic speculation.

Whether or not I agree that macrolanguages are intended for this 
purpose, their definition is controlled by ISO 639 JAC, not by this 
list.  I'm pretty sure you know this, less sure everyone else does.

--
Doug Ewell  *  Fullerton, California, USA  *  RFC 4645  *  UTN #14
http://users.adelphia.net/~dewell/
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