Language subtag registration for acor1990 (ammended from ao1990)

Philip Newton philip.newton at gmail.com
Thu Aug 25 16:59:39 CEST 2011


2011/8/25 "António H F P A Emiliano (FCSH/UNL)" <ah.emiliano at fcsh.unl.pt>:
>
> Earlier periods should be considered: pre1214, 1214, 1255, 1536, 15th
> century,  ...

The language subtag registry does not go about attempting to create a
complete set of subtags, especially for variant subtags.

Those get registered by people who feel a need for them - the lack of
a particular subtag does not mean that such a subtag is not useful; it
just means that nobody has registered it yet.

Registering subtags "for completeness", without a concrete need, is
not necessary.

> Regional variants should also be encoded in subtags: at least one for each
> the signatories of the Treaty of 1990.

I imagine this could be achieved by using the country subtags:
pt-BR-1990 vs pt-PT-1990, for example.

> No tags for NL in that registry.
> Their *absence* should be *food for thought* in this instance.

I don't agree.

> Does one really need language subtags which refer to spelling reforms?

That depends *entirely* on the "one". Perhaps this is the best way to
make the point.

When someone comes along and says, "I have material which I wish to
tag with language subtags. I have a business need to distinguish
between [variety 1] and [variety 2], and would like to propose two
subtags to cover them", that's when variant subtags get created.

Other people may have no such need - simply tagging the text with the
basic language might be sufficient for their needs, for example.
(Perhaps this is the case for the Dutch, for example.)

Or they may not even be using language tags at all.

It's hard to say beforehand what subtags will be needed because
people's business needs vary.

> We got along pretty well in PT without <1911> and <1945> subtags.
> I mean 1911 was a major reform that changed drammatically the outlook of the
> written Portuguese language in Portugal (typographico > tipográfico,
> grammatica > gramática, archetypo > arquétipo, millennio > milénio). No need
> for it was felt in past 100 yrs...
> Shouldn’t one wait till the 1990-reform is fully enforced in Portugal and
> the remaining countries to add the subtag?

I believe this is a question to be addressed to João Miguel Neves, who
proposed the subtag, not to the ietf-languages list.

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


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