Language Variant subtags for Sanskrit

[Phillips, Addison]

I think you mean: "not as a generic variant subtag meaning 'any classical variety'"? A subtag with the meaning "classical Sanskrit" sounds appropriate to me, though.

Addison Phillips
Globalization Architect (Lab126)
Chair (W3C I18N, IETF IRI WGs)

Internationalization is not a feature.
It is an architecture.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ietf-languages-bounces at alvestrand.no [mailto:ietf-languages-
> bounces at alvestrand.no] On Behalf Of Peter Constable
> Sent: Wednesday, July 14, 2010 9:45 AM
> To: Doug Ewell; ietf-languages at iana.org
> Subject: RE: Language Variant subtags for Sanskrit
> 
> IMO, "classical" absolutely should NOT be coded as a variant subtag.
> 
> 
> Peter
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ietf-languages-bounces at alvestrand.no [mailto:ietf-languages-
> bounces at alvestrand.no] On Behalf Of Doug Ewell
> Sent: Wednesday, July 14, 2010 12:21 PM
> To: ietf-languages at iana.org
> Subject: Re: Language Variant subtags for Sanskrit
> 
> Mark Davis 🎆 <mark at macchiato dot com> wrote:
> 
> > This is not a feature of BCP47, nor do I see any *practical*
> value in
> > it, beyond making tags hard to read.
> 
> I know Mark supported non-generic variant subtags with generic-
> sounding values back in 2006, when he proposed 'western' and
> 'eastern' for Armenian (the subtags that were eventually registered
> as 'arevmda' and 'arevela').  From 12 years participating on the
> Unicode list, I'm accustomed to the problem of defending a strongly
> held viewpoint with which most participants disagree.  While there
> is no specific wording in BCP 47 that forbids such a generic-
> sounding subtag value, many participants on ietf-languages have
> opposed this unless the subtag is truly meant to be generic, like
> 'fonipa'.  See the August and September
> 2006 archives.
> 
> Now, Elizabeth Pyatt argues that the word "classical" really does
> have essentially the same meaning for multiple, diverse languages.
> If that is generally held to be true, *then* perhaps a generic
> 'classic' subtag would be appropriate.  In that case, the question
> might be whether 'classic' should be registered with no prefix,
> implying it is potentially relevant to all languages (which can
> never be proven), or whether we should start with a short list of
> prefixes (Elizabeth mentioned Sanskrit and Latin) and add more as
> evidence comes to light.
> 
> I don't have a problem with the other subtags, since I don't think
> words like "epic" and "Vedic" and "Buddhist" are used quite as
> commonly with reference to other languages.  I do feel that
> shoehorning subtag values into the minimum possible 5-character
> limit at the expense of human readability, simply to reduce the
> number of characters in an XML tag, is a false economy.  The
> difference between 5 and 8 isn't that great, even when multiplied
> by a lot of tags.
> 
> --
> Doug Ewell | Thornton, Colorado, USA | http://www.ewellic.org RFC
> 5645, 4645, UTN #14 | ietf-languages @ is dot gd slash 2kf0s ­
> 
> 
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