Language Subtag Registration

[Felix Sasaki]

> Am 29.10.2015 um 10:46 schrieb Michael Everson <everson at evertype.com>:
> 
> On 28 Oct 2015, at 20:16, Felix Sasaki <fsasaki at w3.org> wrote:
> 
>> fonipa says in the description field
>> „*International* Phonetic Alphabet”
> 
> And “fonupa” says “Uralic Phonetic Alphabet” but en-fonupa and fr-fonupa are valid even if fi-fonupa and ee-fonupa are more likely. 
> 
>> You say in the description field 
>> „Wikipedia Simple English“
>> so your description field for wpsimple is language specific, fonipa is not.
> 
> Perhaps this can be finessed. Either we say “Wikipedia Simple Language Version” with en as the prefix adding fr or de or ru later, or to keep “Wikipedia Simple English” and add “Wikipedia Simple French” etc later at need. 

The issue is that the notion of simple language may differ severely among different wikipedia language version. So if the purpose of the extension is to cover wikipedia simple english this should be made explicit in the subtag itself and not in the prefix. And there may then be a need later to create other subtags for other wikipedia language versions. My point is that each community behind a selected wikipedia language version will likely say: we want our own language (subtag) identifier. The generalization of simple language to cover several language versions is problematic, like the generalization of sign languages was problematic (and is now an approach of the past).

- Felix