The limit of language codes

[Christopher Fynn]

MG

ISO 3166 has:

UNITED KINGDOM  GB

It seems GB = United Kingdom [of Great Britain and Northern Ireland]
as far as ISO 3166 is concerned

You write:  "United Kingdom (UK) includes part of Ireland"
and "Great Britain (GB) excludes Ireland" - the fallacy here is that you 
are taking GB to mean something different than it means in the narrow 
context of ISO 3166 - which is only a standard for codes representing 
Country Names - not anything else.

In ISO 3166, "GB" obviously refers to the country "United Kingdom of 
Great Britain and Northern Ireland" not simply "Great Britain" - After 
all there currently no recognized legal country entity consisting only 
of Wales, Scotland and England - so why would it have an ISO 3166 code?

ISO 3166 seems to have derived the code from the first letters of the 
middle two words of the name of the country but you want to change this 
to the first letters of the first two words.

What's the benefit? At least the way things are, if in a few years 
Northern Ireland merges with the Republic of Ireland [IE] (or if "the 
UK" becomes a republic), ISO 3166 won't have to change the code for what 
remains of GB.

Anyway I'm sure most ga pages that are tagged are tagged ga or ga-ie - 
Do you actually know of any tagged ga-gb? Maybe ga-gb could be used for 
ga speakers living in places like Kilburn NW6?

- Chris Fynn





Marion Gunn wrote:
> Trying to silence discussion never solved a problem, Doug.
> 
> These are the facts:
> 1. 
> 2. United Kingdom (UK) includes part of Ireland.
> 3. Inability/refusal to accept that difference also tends to mark people 
> unable/unwilling to accept the difference between Iran and Iraq.:-(
> 
> The specific importance of such difference to laguage tag matters may be 
> thus illustrated:
> 4. ga-uk, gd-uk, cy-uk, en-uk all make sense;
> 5. gd-gb, cy-gb, en-gb also make sense;
> 6. ga-gb makes no sense (see 1 above).
> 7. ga-gb is very misleading (ditto).
> 
> Can anyone say who are the members of ISO 3166/RA, and what position 
> each of those individuals took on the misleading nature of ga-gb when 
> their most recent debate on this matter took place, Doug?
> mg
> 
> On 19 Feb 2007, at 20:53, scríobh Doug Ewell:
> 
>> Marion Gunn <mgunn at egt dot ie> wrote:
>>
>>
>>> Inevitably en-uk.
>>>
>>> Instinctively.
>>>
>>
>> When ISO 3166/MA withdraws GB as their code element for United Kingdom 
>> and assigns UK in its place, we can have this discussion.
> 
> - -
> Marion Gunn * EGTeo (Estab.1991)
> 27 Páirc an Fhéithlinn, Baile an
> Bhóthair, Co. Átha Cliath, Éire.
> * mgunn at egt.ie * eamonn at egt.ie *
> 
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