Subject: [Ltru] [OT] How should "fa" be handled in the future?

From: "Peter Constable" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 21 Apr 2005 12:43:49 -0700

I've a question that's a bit off topic -- it has no bearing on the
content we want in our Internet drafts. But, it does involve a future
implication for RFC 3066ter tags and a decision that needs to go into
ISO/DIS 639-3, and right now this list is particularly appropriate for
providing feedback.

In the course of developing ISO 639-3, there are various issues in ISO
639-2 that I have asked the ISO 639/RA Joint Advisory Committee to
resolve. (I need this to know how items in ISO 639-2 relate to items in
the Ethnologue, and hence what the code table and macrolanguage-mapping
table in part 3 should include.)

One of these issues pertains to Persian / Farsi:

       ISO 639-1: fa
       ISO 639-2/T: fas
       ISO 639-2/B: per

I want to ask people here what their thoughts about this case are since,
given what we have been anticipating wrt 3066ter and 639-3, it will
impact the recommended tag for content related to that part of the
world.

Ethnologue makes a distinction between Persian and Dari. (It uses
different names as the reference names for those entries: the reference
name used for the national language of Iran, aka "Persian", is "Western
Farsi"; the reference name used for the national language of
Afghanistan, aka Dari, is "Eastern Farsi".) I don't think there's really
much debate about that distinction, though occasionally I've seen people
say they're the same.

The question is what the relationship to the existing ISO 639 category
fa/fas/per has to these two items in Ethnologue. The options are:

1) fa/fas/per corresponds exactly to the national language of Iran,
Persian

2) fa/fas/per is a macrolanguage encompassing both Persian and Dari

In the draft for 639-3, I ended up assuming the second choice. A couple
of factors prompted me in that direction:

- the MARC Language Code List treats the ISO 639-2/B ID per as
encompassing Dari

- in the UNDP-sponsored specification for locale requirements for
Afghanistan (http://www.evertype.com/standards/af/), the locale ID used
for Dari is "fa_AF"; this has also been used in CLDR.

Now, the recommended RFC 3066ter language tags for these two languages
under the two options listed above would be as follows:

[Note: in the draft code table for ISO/DIS 639-3, the ID for "Western
Farsi" is "pes", and that for "Eastern Farsi" is "prs". These may
possibly change before 639-3 is published.]

1) fa/fas/per = Persian only:
	Persian: "fa" or "fa-IR"
	Dari: "prs" or "prs-AF"

2) fa/fas/per = macrolangauge encompassing Persian and Dari:
	Persian: "fa-pes" or "fa-pes-IR"
	Dari: "fa-prs" or "fa-prs-AF"

That is, these would be the tags if option 2 is adopted in ISO 639 and
the idea we have had for implementing extlang subtags is adopted in RFC
3066ter without any grandfathering clauses or other complications.

The impact of each of these would be as follows:

- Option 1 would impact MARC records and any other Dari content that has
been tagged using fa/fas/per -- it would now be considered incorrectly
tagged (though the error would only be found on inspection of the
content). It would also impact locale naming for Dari used by CLDR or
any other existing locale implementation that bases names on RFC
3066bis/ter conventions. 

- Option 2 would have a potential modest impact on existing
Persian/Farsi content: if any user or application assumed that
fa/fas/per specifically excluded Dari, that would no longer be the case;
for existing content tagged with fa/fas/per, that tag would still be
valid though not as specific as possible. Also, the locale name for
Persian used by CLDR or other similar implementations would be impacted.

Neither choice is completely clean.

Comments?

Thanks.
 
Peter Constable
GIFT | GPTS | MICROSOFT

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From: John Cowan <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 21 Apr 2005 18:32:39 -0400

> Persian used by CLDR or other similar implementations would be impacted.

I think Option 2 is the clear winner, given that there are already Dari
resources tagged fa.  From what I can make out, people who can read
high-register Farsi don't have much trouble with written Dari.

I think your last point isn't necessarily valid:  fa-IR and fa-AF still
work; the whole point of a macrolanguage is that you use it when you
don't care about details.

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