Addition request: alsatian
Chris Cox
chris.cox at geolang.com
Fri Jan 11 12:10:12 CET 2008
Peter,
Thank you for that explanation of your view on the ISO 639 code - as far as
I am concerned, by joining in with your very clear explanation I can revert
to my original way of thinking and need no longer contort my poor wee brain
into the circularity I found necessary (and somewhat wunconvincing since I
was not convinced) when trying to explain what ISO 639 codes are actually
about in line with the approach taken from the names of the standards and
the teaching I received as a newcomer.
Chris
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Today's Topics:
1. Re: Addition request: alsatian (Karen_Broome at spe.sony.com)
2. RE: Addition request: alsatian (Peter Constable)
3. Re: Addition request: alsatian (Doug Ewell)
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Message: 1
Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2008 11:28:48 -0800
From: Karen_Broome at spe.sony.com
Subject: Re: Addition request: alsatian
To: "Mark Davis" <mark.davis at icu-project.org>
Cc: "ietf-languages at alvestrand.no" <ietf-languages at alvestrand.no>
Message-ID:
<OFAE3C7B18.6D60AAC7-ON882573CC.006A6FA2-882573CC.006B419A at spe.sony.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
One difference between the Valencian variant tag and Alsatian is that the
region of Valencia could not be indicated with an ISO 3166 country code.
France can be represented by one of these codes.
As far as a significant amount of new content becoming available on the
web in various dialects of gsw, I'd say this is more unlikely with written
content. However, video (spoken) content may merit this tag separately
from any tag that appears on the HTML page level, which may very well be
in standard German. Video content is increasing.
Regards,
Karen Broome
Metadata Systems Designer
Sony Pictures Entertainment
310.244.4384
"Mark Davis" <mark.davis at icu-project.org>
Sent by: ietf-languages-bounces at alvestrand.no
01/10/2008 09:23 AM
To
"Stephane Bortzmeyer" <bortzmeyer at nic.fr>
cc
"ietf-languages at alvestrand.no" <ietf-languages at alvestrand.no>
Subject
Re: Addition request: alsatian
On Jan 10, 2008 6:19 AM, Stephane Bortzmeyer <bortzmeyer at nic.fr> wrote:
On Tue, Jan 08, 2008 at 05:02:59PM -0800,
Peter Constable <petercon at microsoft.com> wrote
a message of 18 lines which said:
> *why* Alsatian content needs to be tagged separately from gsw.
Because it is a distinct dialect (see the references I gave), in the
same way that valencian is a dialect of catalan and so deserved a
Variant subtag.
You need to describe what other variants of Alemanic would be referenced
by de-FR. If there aren't any, then de-FR is sufficient.
A second issue is that Alsatian speakers do not think of themselves as
speaking "Alemannic" and that the idea of using gsw alone may be
difficult to "sell" to these people.
We are tagging languages, not names of languages. The fact that some
people call a language, dialect, or variant by a different name doesn't
justify having a variant subtag.
> Do you anticipate Web pages with distinct content for Alsatian than
> other gsw?
Yes, although I must say there are very rare now.
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Message: 2
Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2008 18:30:55 -0800
From: Peter Constable <petercon at microsoft.com>
Subject: RE: Addition request: alsatian
To: IETF Languages Discussion <ietf-languages at iana.org>
Message-ID:
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> From: ietf-languages-bounces at alvestrand.no [mailto:ietf-languages-
> bounces at alvestrand.no] On Behalf Of Michael Everson
> >We are tagging languages, not names of languages.
>
> We are an extension of ISO 639, which gives codes for the
> representation of names of languages.
There is one person I know of who has tried to make much of this point to me
on a few occasions, but I think we must be clear about this: saying that ISO
639 codes names leads to non-productive ends.
Strictly speaking, (e.g.) "French" and "frangais" are distinct names.
Clearly nobody has ever intended that distinct names drawn from different
source languages should be coded differently (practice in ISO 639 with the
English and French names for each ID makes that clear).
Now, (e.g.) "Persian" and "Farsi" can be considered to be two
English-language names for the same semantic category, and they are quite
plainly distinct. Was ISO 639 intended to code those distinctly? I cannot
imagine what that would ever have been considered the intent as that would
serve no useful purpose.
But, the above example is relevant to what I think might have been the
understanding of some or all of the original creators of ISO 639: that the
coding of ISO 639 is an operation on the string for a name of a given
language to derive a 2- or 3-letter string. Thus, "eng" is a coding of
"english", with the implication that (for instance) "xyz" was not a possible
candidate coding for a name for the English language. How this pertains to
the previous example is that the coding must choose one or the other name as
the base: "persian" or "farsi"; thus they are distinct names, and (in this
sense) only one of them is coded.
The end result is that we have IDs that code a language name, and as a
result that reference a particular language. In theory, both "persian" and
"farsi" could be coded, and in this particular case they were both coded in
ISO 639-2 -- but that is one of 22 cases that are and have always been
considered exceptional: the 22 differences between ISO 639-2/T and ISO
639-2/B exist for the same kind of reason that Unicode has precomposed and
compatibility characters: an expedient compromise in the face of legacy or
similar demands to get the consensus needed to adopt the standard. Those are
the only cases of knowing creation of synonymous IDs in ISO 639 (i.e. within
a single codespace), and I can assure you that nobody on the current JAC
would ever dream of creating a new ID for a language name that would result
in *language* synonymy.
In other words, in a very real sense, we can consider ISO 639 as, for
practical purposes, coding languages, not specific language names. And even
if the original intent was "coding a name" was understood as deriving a
string from the string of a conventional name, that clearly is no longer
feasible with ISO 639-3. So, while the name of the standards remain "codes
for the representation of the names of languages", IMO that is really an
anachronism, and that the practical result of having an association between
an ID and some language itself (not a name) that is the current practice of
the JAC is consistent with the practical results of coding in general
(barring the 22 639-2 exceptions) that have been part of ISO 639 all along.
Peter
------------------------------
Message: 3
Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2008 21:47:51 -0800
From: "Doug Ewell" <dewell at roadrunner.com>
Subject: Re: Addition request: alsatian
To: <ietf-languages at iana.org>
Message-ID: <007601c85415$8154e4d0$6501a8c0 at DGBP7M81>
Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="utf-8";
reply-type=original
Combining several response into one post...
StC)phane Bortzmeyer <bortzmeyer at nic dot fr> wrote:
>> *why* Alsatian content needs to be tagged separately from gsw.
> ...
> A second issue is that Alsatian speakers do not think of themselves as
> speaking "Alemannic" and that the idea of using gsw alone may be
> difficult to "sell" to these people.
This may be a good reason to add another Description field to 'gsw',
which can then be used with 'FR', so long as the additional Description
is not seen as narrowing the scope. I don't see how it could be, since
ISO 639 refers to "Catalan; Valencian" even though (as we have seen) at
least some people consider Valencian a dialect of Catalan.
I'm not convinced this is a good reason to add a variant.
Mark Davis <mark dot davis at icu dash project dot org> replied:
> We are tagging languages, not names of languages. The fact that some
> people call a language, dialect, or variant by a different name
> doesn't justify having a variant subtag.
While I understand Michael's response to this, I think Mark's point
(echoed in Peter's reply) was that this particular application of ISO
639 does not code the same thing twice just because it has two names.
Spanish speakers don't call their language "Spanish" and they don't call
it "Castilian," they call it "espaC1ol" or "castellano," but there is
(and should be) only one subtag for these four names. ISO 639 has a
single alpha-2 code element encompassing the first two names, which we
use as a subtag. We could potentially add the other two names.
Karen Broome <Karen underscore Broome at spe dot sony dot com> wrote:
> One difference between the Valencian variant tag and Alsatian is that
> the region of Valencia could not be indicated with an ISO 3166 country
> code. France can be represented by one of these codes.
I agree that this is a fundamental difference. In the Valencian case,
the variant subtag 'valencia' can really be thought of a pseudo-region
subtag for the Comunidad Valenciana region. This isn't needed for
Alsace unless some other Alemannic dialects are commonly associated with
this or other regions of France.
Addison Phillips <addison at yahoo dash inc dot com> wrote:
> One resolution to the conundrum of Karen's request would be:
>
> Now: insert a comment into the 'gsw' record like this:
>
> Comment: This language is also use in the Alsace region of France,
> where it is referred to as Alsatian.
>
> Later, if ISO acts in a manner consistent with changing the
> description, add a Description field saying 'Alsatian' and remove the
> comment. Note that "acts in a manner..." may include not adding the
> description officially to ISO 639.
>
> If, for some reason, Alsatian turns out to be a regional dialect of
> 'gsw' and if evidence is presented here that "gsw-FR" is insufficient
> to represent that dialect, register Stephane's variant (and remove the
> comment).
I support this approach. I really don't see how we can go wrong with
it, since comments and even descriptions can be deleted if desired.
--
Doug Ewell * Fullerton, California, 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 K
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