Subject: [Ltru] Re: Obsolete descriptions (was: "X" vs. 'X (macrolanguage)")

From: "Doug Ewell" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 8 Dec 2007 13:30:44 -0800

Frank Ellermann <nobody at xyzzy dot claranet dot de> wrote:

>>> The SIL pages claim that the description for "sw" is "Swahili 
>>> (macrolanguage)".  The 4646 registry claims that it's "Swahili", at 
>>> least one of them is wrong.
>>
>> SIL's pages in relation to this entry in ISO 639-3 are not wrong wrt 
>> ISO 639.
>
> Then the 4646 registry must be wrong, it's supposed to reflect 
> whatever description ISO 639-1 offers for an alpha-2 code.  Caveat, I 
> looked up the ISO 639-1 "sw" on the SIL Web form, not some ISO 639-3 
> "sw".

The ISO 639-2 site says 'sw' is "Swahili".
The ISO 639-3 site says 'sw' is "Swahili (macrolanguage)".

Nobody's lying.  The two RA's don't agree on this level of detail. 
Probably nobody thought of it before; look how long it took us to get 
around to it.

Replying to me:

>> 639-1 and 639-2 do not have this type of parenthetical information
>
> Peter or John (or both) said that this will be coordinated for all 
> parts of ISO 639, and I made sure to select "639-1" on the Web form 
> where I got "Swahili (macrolanguage)" for "sw".

They're not coordinated.  I suspect that one day they will be, but 
they're not yet.

> Is there another source for this stuff ?  I trashed my old 639-2 
> bookmark in favour of 639-3.

I wouldn't do that, if you want to cross-check the 4645bis work.  Both 
sources are still relevant.  I did trash my 639-1 bookmark, but only 
because everything important points to the 639-2 site anyway.

--
Doug Ewell  *  Fullerton, California, USA  *  RFC 4645  *  UTN #14
http://home.roadrunner.com/~dewell
http://www1.ietf.org/html.charters/ltru-charter.html
http://www.alvestrand.no/mailman/listinfo/ietf-languages  ˆ 

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