comprehensive knowledge about orthographies

Tue Jan 9 12:52:27 CET 2007

> Don Osborne scriptsit
>>Well, in principle that could be done -- if somebody actually had
>>comprehensive knowledge about orthographies. But I know of nobody who
>>does. If someone did, that would be beyond the scope of ISO 639. I know
>>there are some people at SIL that are interested in starting an initiative
>>to compile that kind of info and make it available, but that doesn't exist
>>today.

It is this kind of clarification/verification that the recently announced
collaboration of three new developments are IMO designed to provide a higher
level of certainty and granularity to. Community based
discussion/information becoming available through OmegaWiki to be analysed
and where necessary adjudicated upon by the World Language Documentation
Centre for registration and inclusion in the ISO/639-6 code and extension
tags.

Chris Cox 

-----Original Message-----
From: ietf-languages-bounces at alvestrand.no
[mailto:ietf-languages-bounces at alvestrand.no] On Behalf Of
ietf-languages-request at alvestrand.no
Sent: 09 January 2007 11:00
To: ietf-languages at alvestrand.no
Subject: Ietf-languages Digest, Vol 49, Issue 12

Send Ietf-languages mailing list submissions to
	ietf-languages at alvestrand.no

To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
	http://www.alvestrand.no/mailman/listinfo/ietf-languages
or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
	ietf-languages-request at alvestrand.no

You can reach the person managing the list at
	ietf-languages-owner at alvestrand.no

When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
than "Re: Contents of Ietf-languages digest..."

Today's Topics:

   1. RE: ISO 639 name change: Songhai languages (Don Osborn)
   2. RE: ISO 639 name change: Songhai languages (Peter Constable)
   3. RE: ISO 639 name change: Songhai languages (Don Osborn)
   4. RE: ISO 639 name change: Songhai languages (Peter Constable)
   5. Re: ISO 639 name change: Songhai languages (John Cowan)

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message: 1
Date: Mon, 8 Jan 2007 19:44:29 -0500
From: "Don Osborn" <dzo at bisharat.net>
Subject: RE: ISO 639 name change: Songhai languages
To: "'John Cowan'" <cowan at ccil.org>,	"'Kent Karlsson'"
	<kent.karlsson14 at comhem.se>
Cc: ietf-languages at iana.org
Message-ID: <044201c73387$64b39240$2e1ab6c0$@net>
Content-Type: text/plain;	charset="US-ASCII"

John Cowan winndi:
> 
> Kent Karlsson scripsit:
> 
> > > This is exactly the sort of evidence that would persuade 639-3/RA
> to
> > > add a new macrolanguage.
> >
> > No, why? Keyboard layouts is quite out of scope for that.
> 
> I wasn't speaking about the keyboard layout per se, but rather the fact
> that for certain purposes the Fula, Fulfulde, and Pulaar languages are
> treated as a single language named "Fula".
> That is the sort of thing that makes a macrolanguage designation
> sensible.

By way of explanation, the orthographies used by Fula and varieties thereof
are set at the country level, and have no relation to the linguistic
divisions in Ethnologue (or for that matter other scholars). A country may
by virtue of its borders, group and split languages as defined by Ethnologue
& 639-3, but one orthography will cover all varieties in that country and
not necessarily be the same as its neighbor. As it happens, these
orthographies are quite well harmonized with only a few minor differences.

The keyboard example comes in since Tavultesoft referenced linguistic
divisions from Ethnologue rather than country specifications of a larger
grouping (ff in this case) 

Often a country will decide on a certain approach to the orthography of a
particular language based on history or considerations of alphabets used for
other indigenous languages of its population. I think this kind of situation
is actually common in Africa if you are talking about alphabets and
keyboards. Macrolanguage thus facilitates making the country level
distinctions for orthography and locales; language (per Ethnologue)
facilitates text or at least more complex texts. (That's a broadbrush
statement, but is generally true, from what I see.)

So, to say a Keyman keyboard like the AFRO one is appropriate for the
Fulfulde of Western Niger (fuh) is not really accurate or helpful. Anything
that is good for the west is good for the east (fuq) and you'd be better off
referring to just Fula macrolanguage (a locale would be ff-NE). And as far
as keyboards for that language go, they would probably cover several country
locales, but that is getting offtopic again...

------------------------------

Message: 2
Date: Mon, 8 Jan 2007 17:09:13 -0800
From: Peter Constable <petercon at microsoft.com>
Subject: RE: ISO 639 name change: Songhai languages
To: <ietf-languages at iana.org>
Message-ID:

<19A328037921AA42847A717566D1D6A10A2E3293 at RED-MSG-42.redmond.corp.microsoft.
com>

Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

> From: ietf-languages-bounces at alvestrand.no [mailto:ietf-languages-
> bounces at alvestrand.no] On Behalf Of Don Osborn

> So, to say a Keyman keyboard like the AFRO one is appropriate for the
> Fulfulde of Western Niger (fuh) is not really accurate or helpful.
Anything
> that is good for the west is good for the east (fuq) and you'd be better
off
> referring to just Fula macrolanguage (a locale would be ff-NE). And as far
> as keyboards for that language go, they would probably cover several
country
> locales, but that is getting offtopic again...

A problem for a small company like Tavultesoft is that they have no way to
?know up front when a category from ISO 639 will capture the right
distinctions and ?when it won't. They just don't have the resources to
gather all the necessary info and process it. And so, a very easy solution
for them -- albeit one that makes some ?compromises -- is to simply adopt a
comprehensive coding set like 639-3 and ?assume it's good enough for the
given application. In such a case, maybe it is good ?enough, and maybe it
isn't.

Peter Constable?

------------------------------

Message: 3
Date: Mon, 8 Jan 2007 21:18:21 -0500
From: "Don Osborn" <dzo at bisharat.net>
Subject: RE: ISO 639 name change: Songhai languages
To: "'Peter Constable'" <petercon at microsoft.com>,
	<ietf-languages at iana.org>
Message-ID: <044a01c73394$83bac3e0$8b304ba0$@net>
Content-Type: text/plain;	charset="US-ASCII"

Hi Peter. It may indeed be unfair to pick on them, but it was one example.
Another problem may be if the designer/contributors of a keyboard are not
clear on the concept - how is the site owner to know better? Ultimately the
problem is that third parties (users) come along and assume what they see
online is authoritative. 

So aside from someone like me (in this case) taking the time to pass on some
suggestions, is there any way that the listings can give caveats? Such as -
"this language is also part of a macrolanguage x" (the individual language
pages on the 639-3 site do this; Ethnologue might do similarly). And "the
writing system of this language may be determined in each country it is
spoken." (or some such). 

If popups hadn't been so abused one could actually consider some sort of use
of that feature to give pertinent added info to alert users in the case of
more complex language/macrolanguage situations (I should perhaps suggest
something along these lines for Ethnologue 16 online).

Maybe in addition to the more extensive RFDs there could be somewhere a very
simple boilerplate intro to language tags that also includes the (perhaps
discouraging at first) caveat that we all know: describing languages by tags
however useful is also reducing a complex phenomenon to very simple
categories. 

There are other ideas too, but it's probably best to leave it at that for
now. In the end maybe no degree of caveats and alerts will avoid some kinds
of misuse, but some might help.

Don

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ietf-languages-bounces at alvestrand.no [mailto:ietf-languages-
> bounces at alvestrand.no] On Behalf Of Peter Constable
> Sent: Monday, January 08, 2007 8:09 PM
> To: ietf-languages at iana.org
> Subject: RE: ISO 639 name change: Songhai languages
> 
> > From: ietf-languages-bounces at alvestrand.no [mailto:ietf-languages-
> > bounces at alvestrand.no] On Behalf Of Don Osborn
> 
> > So, to say a Keyman keyboard like the AFRO one is appropriate for the
> > Fulfulde of Western Niger (fuh) is not really accurate or helpful.
> > Anything that is good for the west is good for the east (fuq) and
> > you'd be better off referring to just Fula macrolanguage (a locale
> > would be ff-NE). And as far as keyboards for that language go, they
> > would probably cover several country locales, but that is getting
> offtopic again...
> 
> A problem for a small company like Tavultesoft is that they have no way
> to ?know up front when a category from ISO 639 will capture the right
> distinctions and ?when it won't. They just don't have the resources to
> gather all the necessary info and process it. And so, a very easy
> solution for them -- albeit one that makes some ?compromises -- is to
> simply adopt a comprehensive coding set like 639-3 and ?assume it's
> good enough for the given application. In such a case, maybe it is good
> ?enough, and maybe it isn't.
> 
> 
> 
> Peter Constable?
> _______________________________________________
> Ietf-languages mailing list
> Ietf-languages at alvestrand.no
> http://www.alvestrand.no/mailman/listinfo/ietf-languages

------------------------------

Message: 4
Date: Mon, 8 Jan 2007 20:45:52 -0800
From: Peter Constable <petercon at microsoft.com>
Subject: RE: ISO 639 name change: Songhai languages
To: <ietf-languages at iana.org>
Message-ID:

<19A328037921AA42847A717566D1D6A10A2E33F7 at RED-MSG-42.redmond.corp.microsoft.
com>

Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

From: Don Osborn [mailto:dzo at bisharat.net] 

> So aside from someone like me (in this case) taking the 
> time to pass on some suggestions, is there any way that 
> the listings can give caveats? Such as - "this language 
> is also part of a macrolanguage x" (the individual language
> pages on the 639-3 site do this; 

Well, there you go.

> Ethnologue might do similarly). 

I think it's out of scope for Ethnologue; language coding is not its
purpose. (But that's just my opinion; I don't speak for the Ethnologue.
You can always suggest it to them.)

> And "the writing system of this language may be determined 
> in each country it is spoken." (or some such). 

Well, in principle that could be done -- if somebody actually had
comprehensive knowledge about orthographies. But I know of nobody who
does. If someone did, that would be beyond the scope of ISO 639. I know
there are some people at SIL that are interested in starting an
initiative to compile that kind of info and make it available, but that
doesn't exist today.

> give pertinent added info to alert users in the case of more
> complex language/macrolanguage situations (I should perhaps
> suggest something along these lines for Ethnologue 16 online).

It never hurts to try suggesting.

> In the end maybe no degree of caveats and alerts will avoid 
> some kinds of misuse, but some might help.

Offering guidance certainly can't hurt, while the lack of guidance can.

Peter Constable

------------------------------

Message: 5
Date: Mon, 8 Jan 2007 23:59:05 -0500
From: John Cowan <cowan at ccil.org>
Subject: Re: ISO 639 name change: Songhai languages
To: Don Osborn <dzo at bisharat.net>
Cc: ietf-languages at iana.org, 'Kent Karlsson'
	<kent.karlsson14 at comhem.se>
Message-ID: <20070109045905.GB30104 at ccil.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

Don Osborn scripsit:

> So, to say a Keyman keyboard like the AFRO one is appropriate
> for the Fulfulde of Western Niger (fuh) is not really accurate or
> helpful. Anything that is good for the west is good for the east
> (fuq) and you'd be better off referring to just Fula macrolanguage (a
> locale would be ff-NE). And as far as keyboards for that language go,
> they would probably cover several country locales, but that is getting
> offtopic again...

Well, okay, some keyboards need to be marked with more than one
language, then.  That's where the se/fi keyboard comes in; there's
no macrolanguage there.

-- 
As we all know, civil libertarians are not      John Cowan
the friskiest group around -- comes from        cowan at ccil.org
forever being on the qui vive for the sound     http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
of jack-booted fascism coming down the pike.           --Molly Ivins

------------------------------

_______________________________________________
Ietf-languages mailing list
Ietf-languages at alvestrand.no
http://www.alvestrand.no/mailman/listinfo/ietf-languages

End of Ietf-languages Digest, Vol 49, Issue 12
**********************************************

-- 
No virus found in this incoming message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.410 / Virus Database: 268.16.7/618 - Release Date: 1/6/2007