Duplicate Busters: Survey #1

[Doug Ewell]

Frank Ellermann <nobody at xyzzy dot claranet dot de> wrote:

> If a 4646bis would be published it apparently offers a new
> field "Scope" to disambiguate "macrolanguage" from the same
> description used for an "individual language".
>
> If that is so the context explaining why there is a dupe is
> in the registry, a similar situation as for the "deprecated"
> dupes.  Therefore the source description should stay as is.

I guess this comment applies to Dimli/Kirmanjki/Zaza.

> For three of the four remaining cases (Aruá, Awa, Murik) it
> would be nice to get the disambiguation in the *source*, or
> as a comment.  Don't touch their Descriptions, it is the job
> of the source to get it right, and it is the job of Comments
> to offer critical missing info.

I agree with Frank (and Debbie) that it would be good to have ISO 639-3 
disambiguate these.  At first I was concerned about their turnaround 
time, but then I thought of LTRU's milestones and laughed at myself.

The changes I am proposing to the source names consist only of adding 
parenthetical annotations to the existing names, in the same (and only) 
way that ISO 639 already uses parentheses in language names:

Interlingua (International Auxiliary Language Association)
Malay (macrolanguage)
Occitan (post 1500)
Slave (Athapascan)
Tonga (Tonga Islands)

> The last case (Borna) is arguably no real dupe, bwo is also
> known as Boro, bbx is only known as Borna.

ISO 639-3 makes a distinction between the reference and non-reference 
names.  RFC 4646bis does not, although it will non-normatively place the 
ISO 639-3 reference name (if any) first within the record.  So this is 
not a problem for 639-3, but it is for us.

> Survey #1, are there coming more ?

There will be a #2.  Stay tuned.

--
Doug Ewell  *  Thornton, Colorado, USA  *  RFC 4645  *  UTN #14
http://www.ewellic.org
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