One language, one subtag

[CE Whitehead]

>
>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.

So we never register macrolanguages?

>>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.
>

Yes, the issue of course is what exactly is Middle French.  15th century 
Middle French is one thing; 16th century Middle French is quite another; and 
is close to much of, but not all of 17th century French.

As has been noted before, there's not going to always be a sharp defining 
point at which a historical variant becomes modern.

For me, I have no problem temporarily (while we wait for a macrolanguage 
subtag or a language collection subtag) using (fr) for anything after some 
arbitrary point and (frm) for anything earlier than some arbitrary point
(thus early 16th century French would clearly be frm although it is much 
like the later 16th century stuff, but there are a few differences;
'aucune' is spelled with an 'l', 'aulcune;' otherwise it is very similar; 
similarly, late 17th century French as spoken in France would clearly be 
tagged fr; I'm still not sure where I'm going to put up that divider though; 
and it will depend partly on the variant subtags I get if I get any!!!)

But it would be nice to indicate clearly that the text was in a variant of 
French peculiar to the 16th and 17th centuries.
The requested subtags (16siecle) or (1606nict)  [the latter of these however 
does not include in it early 16th century French, such as the French of 
Rabelais, simply because Nicot 1606 does not catalogue the "aulcune" 
spelling of 'aucune' and other spellings with 'l'!];
and (17siecle) or (1694acad) would do this.


Indeed, a macrolanguage subtag that included in it both (fr) and (frm) would 
further muddy the waters as far as tagging goes, without some sort of 
variant subtag(s) to go with it (in my case).


>
>>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

I did not know this; thanks, Doug.  So we never define macrolanguages!

Thanks.

--C. E. Whitehead
cewcathar at hotmail.com
>
>

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