Criteria for languages?
John Cowan
cowan at ccil.org
Tue Dec 1 19:53:10 CET 2009
Michael Everson scripsit:
> I do not believe that, erm, some "Lettish" is a "macrolanguage"
> including Latvian and Latgalian.
Nevertheless, when people say "Latvian" (or "lav"), sometimes the
denotation includes only standard Latvian, and sometimes it includes
both standard Latvian and standard Latgalian.
> If librarians tagged some Latgalian data with "the nearest thing" that
> still does not mean that all Latvian-language data is broken.
No one suggests that it is. Standard Latvian data can correctly continue
to be tagged "lav".
> If "lav" becomes a macrolanguage then to be precise all Latvian books
> will have to be re-tagged.
To be *maximally* precise, yes. But maximal precision isn't always
desirable (or even available). It often costs too much to achieve.
It's a lot easier to determine that the average price of a house in
Co. Mayo is about 25,000 euros than to get a figure correct down
to the last cent.
--
John Cowan cowan at ccil.org http://ccil.org/~cowan
Female celebrity stalker, on a hot morning in Cairo:
"Imagine, Colonel Lawrence, ninety-two already!"
El Auruns's reply: "Many happy returns of the day!"
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