Questions on ISO 639-3

[Peter Constable]

> although if the Moldovans want to have their language identified as Romanian...

Let's be clear: ISO 639 doesn't give "Romanian" _as an identifier_. It gives "ro" / "ron" / "rum" as identifiers for the language alternately referred to (in English) as "Moldavian" or "Romanian". The use of tags with "ro" does not entail identifying the language as Romanian as opposed to Moldavian.


Peter

From: ietf-languages-bounces at alvestrand.no [mailto:ietf-languages-bounces at alvestrand.no] On Behalf Of CE Whitehead
Sent: Wednesday, November 26, 2008 10:07 AM
To: ietf-languages at iana.org
Subject: RE: Questions on ISO 639-3

Thanks, Addison; I think the regional prefixes have been suggested before.

My only concern is that--as Addison points out--the division between the dialects does not quite fall on political boundaries; and I still think it is very difficult to get around political issues when assigning these subtags, although if the Moldovans want to have their language identified as Romanian, then that is fine with me; however if they decided they want a variant subtag, I would leaning towards o.k.-ing it, but I will not go and apply for one.

--C. E. Whitehead
cewcathar at hotmail.com<mailto:cewcathar at hotmail.com>


From: addison at amazon.com
Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2008 11:52:57 -0800

> The difference between "Moldavian" and "Romanian" can be accounted for using a region subtag (since Moldova and Romania > were both countries last time I looked). The use of a region subtag does not imply that the language thus referred to stops
> exactly where the international frontier is currently located. There is no need to invent variants.
O.k. ( Although you are right the division is not going to fall right on political borders in this case;
and of course, why then was the variant,

scotland
Description: Scottish Standard English
Added: 2007-08-31
Prefix: en

needed?

Seems a bit inconsistent to me; that's all.)


> Addison

> Addison Phillips
Globalization Architect -- Lab126

Internationalization is not a feature.
It is an architecture.

From: ietf-languages-bounces at alvestrand.no [mailto:ietf-languages-bounces at alvestrand.no] On Behalf Of CE Whitehead
Sent: Tuesday, November 25, 2008 10:26 AM
To: ietf-languages at iana.org
Subject: Questions on ISO 639-3

Hi!

I think what Kent is saying here has some merit; but for Moldavian, it seems that if someone wants to identify the differences between spoken Moldavian and Romanian, a variant subtag would be an option. . . & that's all this list can offer, too, in this matter (as far as I understand things).   There is no need to identify the written differences.


Sincerely,

C. E. Whitehead
cewcathar at hotmail.com<mailto:cewcathar at hotmail.com>
Kent Karlsson kent.karlsson14 at comhem.se
Sat Nov 22 10:54:39 CET 2008


> Den 2008-11-22 04.53, skrev "Peter Constable" <petercon at microsoft.com>:

>>
>> (A purist solution, linguistically, would have been to deem Akan as an
>> individual language and deem the others as dialects, hence out of scope and
>> worthy of deprecation. That seemed a bit drastic, however.)
> Given the recent history with Moldavian in ISO 639, doing what you suggest
> here does not seem to be too drastic.
        /kent k


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