ISO 639 name change: Songhai languages

Kent Karlsson kent.karlsson14 at comhem.se
Fri Jan 5 20:50:12 CET 2007


John Cowan wrote:

> A macrolanguage is a group of language varieties which are 
> not mutually intelligible,

If they really aren't mutually intelligible (to a very high degree),
they are separate languages that cannot be given a macrolanguage
umbrella.

> but which are treated as a single language for 
> certain purposes.

That's what "language collections" are for.  (Like putting books
in those languages on the same shelf.) Not really useful as
language tags, nor for locales.

Chinese is macrolanguage just because the usually used
writing system is so abstract that it is not phonetic (and thus
there is a high degree of mutual intelligibility between those
languages for written documents; simplified vs. traditional aside).

	/kent k



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