Here's a practical implication I came across: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Language_codes http://sh.wikipedia.org/ - 23k articles (Serbo-Croatian) which co-exists with: http://sr.wikipedia.org/ - 76k articles (Serbian) http://hr.wikipedia.org/ - 62k articles (Croatian) http://bs.wikipedia.org/ - 27k articles (Bosnian) Caoimhín