Subject: Re: [Ltru] Re: extlang

From: John Cowan <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 3 Sep 2007 23:46:47 -0400

Addison Phillips scripsit:

> Thus, if I were to support extlang, it would be based solely on John 
> Cowan's argument that we need extlang to prevent a "retagging crisis" 
> for languages formerly enclosed by a macrolanguage.

Indeed, I think this is the most important point.  RFCs come and go,
but tagging decisions ought not to have to be revisited.  We have already
obsoleted some IETF or semi-IETF tags in favor of ISO ones, but there's
no getting away from that.

> 2. Randy suggested (a long while ago now) that cherry-picking from the 
> macrolanguage list would be a bad idea. Yet tag stability provisions 
> prevent us from taking the list wholesale.

Three macrolanguages with seven encompassed languages, all accounted
for by the same pre-existing principle (stability), hardly counts
as cherry-picking.

> And I have some concern that the macrolanguage "collections" (if you'll
> pardon this inaccurate term) have yet to be thoroughly tested. They
> may not be stable or suitable in the short-to-medium term. This is
> not a critique of ISO 639-3's work here. It is merely a note of caution.

I'm not sure what counts as testing in this case.  Can you explain further?

> If I were to support doing extlangs, it would consider each 
> macrolanguage separately, as a one-time-event, and, again, solely as a 
> compatibility item.

That's pretty much what SIL (read Peter C) actually did.

> Note that we also face our own exception--I assume future sign languages 
> would be treated as extlangs for compatibility reasons. Note that sign 
> languages are NOT macrolanguages in the first place--they are already 
> exceptional. I would favor eliminating this use of extlang too.

That's a point I hadn't considered.  New sign languages do arise.

> ... but I feel that we're doing a disservice to the various languages 
> involved by making them extlangs. Shouldn't Cantonese, Wu, or Hakka be 
> treated fully as languages? 

The fact is that people don't: they are *not* treated fully as languages
except by linguists and people strongly influenced by them.

> Users can still use the macrolanguage tag instead (I doubt we'll see
> much 'cmn-*' when 'zh-*' is available).

Exactly.  People will continue to use "zh", but those who want to be more
explicit can use "zh-cmn", just as people who want to be explicit about
script can use "zh-Hans".  With extlangs, there is a soft choice between
"zh" and "zh-cmn" rather than a hard choice between "zh" and "cmn".

-- 
Where the wombat has walked,            John Cowan <[email-masked]>
it will inevitably walk again.          http://www.ccil.org/~cowan

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From: GerardM <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 4 Sep 2007 13:20:12 +0200

> "zh" and "zh-cmn" rather than a hard choice between "zh" and "cmn".

Hoi,
>From my perspective the system is how it is, the codes are mainly to be used
by computers and it can look as horrible as it does. I do not care what
people do because that would mean that we accept that they will continue to
have 85% of the Internet not tagged and most of what is tagged tagged
incorrectly.

My question is about Min Nan, according to what is proposed zh-nan. This
language has been written in both the Chinese script and the Latin script
for several centuries. According to my information it was already written in
the Latin script in the 16th century in the Philippines. The question, zh
implies one of the Chinese scripts. Should the code therefore be zh-nan-Latn
and, should there not be a code for the particular orthography as well and
can a code for the orthography replace the Latn indicator.

NB this is a practical question as the Wikipedia in Min-Nan is written in
the Latin script.

Thanks,
     Gerard