Language Variant subtags

[Philip Newton]

On Mon, Jul 5, 2010 at 6:42 PM, Peter Scharf <peter_scharf at brown.edu> wrote:
> LANGUAGE SUBTAG REGISTRATION FORM
>    1. Name of requester: Peter M. Scharf
>    2. E-mail address of requester: scharf at brown.edu
>    3. Record Requested:
>
>       Type:variant
>       Subtag:class
>       Description:Classical Sanskrit
>       Prefix:sa
>       Preferred-Value:
>       Deprecated:
>       Suppress-Script:
>       Macrolanguage:
>       Comments:
>
>    4. Intended meaning of the subtag:Classical Sanskrit
>    5. Reference to published description
>       of the language (book or article):Whitney, William Dwight. Sanskrit Grammar. Second edition. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989.
>    6. Any other relevant information:

Personally, I'd be against registering something looking like "class",
"classic", "classics" with the specific meaning "Classical Sanskrit",
with a Prefix of "sa".

I would either expect the subtag to mean something like "Classical
variant of the appropriate language" (with the meaning depending on
usage for that particular language, e.g. Classical Greek, Classical
Latin, Classical Sanskrit; in this case, I would expect there to be no
Prefix: field so that the subtag could apply to any language); or, if
the explicit meaning "Classical Sanskrit" is desired, to make the
subtag name less generic, e.g. "classans" or "saclass" or something.

> LANGUAGE SUBTAG REGISTRATION FORM
>    1. Name of requester: Peter M. Scharf
>    2. E-mail address of requester: scharf at brown.edu
>    3. Record Requested:
>
>       Type:variant
>       Subtag:epics
>       Description:Epic Sanskrit
>       Prefix:sa
>       Preferred-Value:
>       Deprecated:
>       Suppress-Script:
>       Macrolanguage:sa
>       Comments:
>
>    4. Intended meaning of the subtag:Epic Sanskrit
>    5. Reference to published description
>       of the language (book or article):Oberlies, Thomas. A Grammar of Epic Sanskrit. Indian philology and South Asian studies 5. Berlin; New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2003
>    6. Any other relevant information:

This registration form still has a stray "Macrolanguage:sa" field.

Cheers,
Philip
-- 
Philip Newton <philip.newton at gmail.com>