Appeal to ISO 639 RA in support of Elfdalian

[Michael Everson]

Here is an initial draft. Who will take up the pen and offer more? 

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The group responsible for the IETF language subtags is deeply concerned at the reasons given by the 639 RA for rejection of the Elfdalian language. There is no question but that its linguistic features are unique in the continuum of North Germanic languages. The reasons given for the rejection are poor: Two people with job tiles have essentially said “I don’t like it” and giving no linguistic argument at all. Rebuttal documents were far more convincing.

We write to the 639 RA in appeal, and ask you to to rescind your rejection immediately (without waiting a year). The provision of a 639-3 subtag is urgently required to meet an important user need if the RA will not grant a subtag we WILL be forced to approve a language subtag. This will be disadvantageous to users of Elfdalian, because it will ultimately lead to multiple codes for this language when a formal 639 subtag gets approved. 

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Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com/