Latin Variants

Doug Ewell doug at ewellic.org
Mon Feb 22 18:08:23 CET 2016


Hi Andrew,

Thanks for sending these and for your efforts to follow the BCP 47 
guidelines for requesting subtags.

>From an administrative standpoint, you need to submit one registration 
form for each subtag being requested, not a single form for three 
subtags. We can certainly help with that.

Additionally, variant subtags must be 5 to 8 characters long, or 4 if 
they begin with a digit, so 'neo' would not be a valid subtag value. 
There would need to be discussion on the list as to a replacement value.

Beyond that, you will probably see significant pushback on the subtag 
values. The terms "classical", "medieval", and "neo"​ (or "modern") 
could obviously apply to many languages other than Latin. Variant 
subtags with these generic-sounding values would invite off-label usage 
to modify other primary language subtags, such as "classical Tamil" or 
"medieval Welsh," in spite of the Description fields which specify 
Latin. Traditionally there has been opposition on the list to this sort 
of "generic" variant when the meaning of, say, "classical" is 
substantially different depending on the base language.

We do have generic variants, such as 'fonipa' for a language written in 
the International Phonetic Alphabet, because in cases like that the 
meaning of the variant is the same regardless of language.

Looking forward to your continued participation,

--
Doug Ewell | http://ewellic.org | Thornton, CO πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡Έ



More information about the Ietf-languages mailing list