Subject: [Ltru] deletion of Extended Language Subtags in draft-ietf-ltru-4646bis-10

From: Nicolas Krebs <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 15 Dec 2007 12:57:16 +0100

Hello, 

I beg your pardon, but i have missed the discussion thread about 
deletion of  Extended Language Subtags, so i have only discovered it 
in "John Cowan throws in the towel on extlangs" and in 
draft-ietf-ltru-4646bis-10 in section 2.2.2
http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-ltru-4646bis-10#section-2.2.2
(and in the diff). 

Could you give me pointers for the previous discussion?

Here what i think about this. 

ISO 639-3 contain/include language subtags for idioms which are not 
languages, but dialects. Examples :
aln	Gheg Albanian
als	Tosk Albanian
zdj	Ngazidja Comorian
wlc	Mwali Comorian

With "Extended Language Subtags" format, i can build sq-aln and 
sq-als, and there is no more issue about those idioms being dialects 
or language. 

Of course, LTRU wg is an IETF working group and do not work on poll, 
so you are free to ignore my opinion. 

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From: Peter Constable <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 15 Dec 2007 06:48:11 -0800

> From: Nicolas Krebs [mailto:[email-masked]]

> Could you give me pointers for the previous discussion?

Well, it's been under discussion for a few years now. But the focused, recent discussion has mainly been in the "John Cowan throws..." and "Remove extlang..." thread, both started on or after 11/29. You'll also want to see the short "summary of recommendations..." thread from 12/1.

> sq-als, and there is no more issue about those idioms being dialects

These are in 639-3 on the basis that some linguists at some point had presented evidence that these should be considered distinct languages in Ethnologue. These and certain other cases out of ~7000 in Ethnologue may be controversial. But it is not our place here to judge the decisions of ISO 639 unless we think they create stability concerns we need to protect against in RFC 4646bis. Certainly there's some relationship between sq and aln; however, since three weeks ago the momentum has shifted toward abandoning the tentative plan to use extlangs. That means that aln, etc. will stand on their own as language subtags. If at some point in the future ISO 639 deprecates aln etc. on the grounds that they are not distinct languages, our choices would be to leave things as they are or to deprecate them as well.

> so you are free to ignore my opinion.

The decision process is one of consensus. Everyone on this list has opinions, all of which need to be considered. The decision process shouldn't be a matter of some subset of movers and shakers deciding they can ignore certain opinion. Ideally, it should be everyone deciding (on each issue), "Having considered all the factors, this is a plan we can live with." In practice, not everyone will always do that, but we need to try to address concerns and minimize levels of dissent.

Peter

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From: Stephane Bortzmeyer <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 16 Dec 2007 22:12:54 +0100

On Sat, Dec 15, 2007 at 12:57:16PM +0100,
 Nicolas Krebs <[email-masked]> wrote 
 a message of 36 lines which said:

> languages, but dialects.

You may consider them this way, but ISO decided and we cannot overturn
them here. 

> sq-als, and there is no more issue about those idioms being dialects 

But you don't think that all the "encompassed languages"
("micro-languages") of ISO 639-3 are "just dialects", no? So, we would
have to decide which are represented by extlangs and which are not. I
believe it would be too complicated (and arbitrary because it would
mean a discussion on a classification that was already decided by
ISO).