Subtags and politics (was: Re: acade - LANGUAGE SUBTAG REGISTRATION FORM)

[Doug Ewell]

Apparently there is still some major misunderstanding and misinformation 
being spread about the RFC 4646 and the ietf-languages group, and the 
supposed political effects of what we do.

We -- actually, the Language Subtag Reviewer, with the non-binding 
advice of the rest of us -- register variant subtags to help users of 
RFC 4646 (BCP 47) language tags identify content in different language 
varieties.  These variant subtags are intended to improve the 
identification of different language varieties, so that they can be 
selected in a Web browser, so that the correct spelling dictionary or 
translation engine can be selected, etc.  Variant subtags are almost 
always optional; they can be omitted whenever no problematic ambiguity 
would result from their omission.

We are not a political organization, nor an official sanctioning body 
for language usage.  We do not register variants with the intent of 
granting some sort of legitimacy or blessing to any language variety, 
nor to take away legitimacy from any other variety, whether that second 
variety has its own subtag or not.  We register variants on the basis of 
linguistic differentiation alone.

We are aware that some individuals or groups may seek a specialized 
language tagging solution, such as a variant subtag, to make a political 
statement, and also that other individuals or groups may support or 
oppose that subtag, to make their own political statement.  It is never 
100% possible to establish whether a proposal is made for non-linguistic 
reasons, and so we don't try to make that determination.  Rather, we 
evaluate each proposal solely on the basis of language tagging needs.

In the case of Belarusian, we know that some political and/or activist 
baggage is associated with the different orthographies, and specifically 
that supporters and opponents of the "academic" subtag (whatever we call 
it) may be influenced by politics or activism.  Our goal is to ignore 
this, and focus only on whether the actual difference in orthography is 
sufficient so that variant subtags would make an improvement in Web 
searching, dictionary selection, and so on.

If the linguistic or orthographic differences were trivial, and 
consisted only of specialized vocabulary that made a political statement 
(many languages have such vocabulary), then no subtag would be 
justified.  Throughout the Belarusian debates, neither side has 
attempted to prove that the differences between orthographies are 
trivial.  It is clear that noticeable differences exist, and the case 
has been made for separate variant subtags to distinguish them.  One 
side continuing to disparage the other's orthography, or political 
motivations, does not change this.

Organizations and standards that are not bound to use BCP 47, but choose 
to do so anyway, such as the Wikimedia Foundation, are of course free to 
apply parts of BCP 47 as they see fit, in accordance with their views, 
which may also be political.  However, just to beat this point into the 
ground, we do not register subtags on the basis of political motivation.

--
Doug Ewell  *  Thornton, Colorado, USA  *  RFC 4645  *  UTN #14
http://www.ewellic.org
http://www1.ietf.org/html.charters/ltru-charter.html
http://www.alvestrand.no/mailman/listinfo/ietf-languages  ˆ