Missing subtags 003 and 172

[CE Whitehead]

Hi!

I am not sure about the utility of either of the region tags but am leaning toward considering 172 more useful; however historically the 003 might have been useful in identifiying varieties of Spanish and French.
 
 
For the Americas, the region codes include (in addition to the North American codes) 
* 019 Americas 
* which would include both Latin America and the Caribbean as well as North America 
* Latin America and Caribbean 419
 
Spanish pronunciation cannot be cut up neatly in any case.
Mexico used to use "Usted" -- the polite form of "you" (rather than "tu," the familiar form of 'you') more than Spain (I've heard children in LA used "tu"): Latin American still favors "ustedes" -- 'you' plural form -- over "vosotros" according to Wikipedia; 
in Mexican colloquial Spanish people say "pa" for "para" 'for'
and "sho" for "yo" 'I' 
In Mexican Spanish, for the word "Mexico," the "x" is pronounced so that the x is somewhat between an h and a velar fricative I think.
Chilean Spanish is very difficult to understand for non-Spanish-speakers.
I always thought of it as in a class by itself.
For more see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_dialects_and_varieties
http://www.trustedtranslations.com/spanish-language/latin-american-dialects.asp
(you'll learn that Puerto Rican and Mexican Spanish are quite different)
especially pronunciation of j which is I think one of the keys for the Americas (x, j, etc.) whereas to distinguish Spanish of the Americas and parts of Spain from that of Castille the key pronounciations are theta versus s/z (the latter have mostly merged)
 
Regarding the Commonwealth of Independent States, 
according to:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_of_Independent_States#Russian_language
"Russian language
Russia has been urging that the Russian language receive official status in all of the CIS member states. So far Russian is an official language in four of these states: Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan. Russian is also considered an official language in the region of Transnistria, and the autonomous region of Gagauzia in Moldova. Viktor Yanukovych, the Moscow-supported presidential candidate in the controversial Ukrainian presidential election, 2004, declared his intention to make Russian an official second language of Ukraine. However, Viktor Yushchenko, the winner, did not do so, since he was closely aligned with the Ukrainian-speaking population. Russians, who lives on Ukraine, received new hope for official status of theirs language when Viktor Yanukovish won President elections 2010.[citation needed]."
 
(I do not have a strong opinion in any case.)

Best,
C. E. Whitehead
cewcathar at hotmail.com