One language, one subtag

[Ciarán Ó Duibhín]

Doug Ewell wrote:
> Ciarán Ó Duibhín 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:

OK, if that happens, we will be back to looking for a solution based on
variant subtags!

...<snip>

> > 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.

It is good to know that, in choosing between language tags such as fr and
frm, the chronology (and geography) is accepted to be secondary to the
linguistics.  Thanks for this info.

Ciarán Ó Duibhín.