Re: [Ltru] Macrolanguage, Extlang. The Sami language situation as example

> From: ltru-bounces@ietf.org [mailto:ltru-bounces@ietf.org] On Behalf Of
> Leif Halvard Silli

> It does anyhow seem as if those who support extlang consider the
> Macrolanguage information generally relevant, while the other
> group is more sceptical about how relevant that information is.

Well, what I find striking is that the *only* cases involving macrolanguages that are getting discussed are:

- Chinese

- Norwegian: this has also been mentioned by you, but since "no" has been deprecated in ISO 639 for many years now, and introducing "no-nb"/"no-nn" or "no-nob"/"no-nno" would certainly but be compatible with existing usage.

- Arabic: this has been cited in some examples, but I don't hear anyone sounding eager to use extlang subtags with ar.

- Don Osborne has several times over the past couple of years mentioned interest in the macrolanguage concept wrt African languages because of (IIUC) trends toward evolution of varieties used for wider communication. But it's not clear to me that macrolanguage is the appropriate concept there, as opposed to a distinct, individual language, and even if these are considered macrolanguages I don't see requests to have extlang for these cases: if anything, the emerging variety used in wider communication makes the local varieties *less* relevant for tagging purposes, not more.

So, there is really *only* one case that people seem to care about (at least, in the near term -- who knows what may happen with Bikol or Zapotec in the future) and that would really be impacted by our current decision, and that's Chinese.

(As much as people don't want to cherry pick arbitrarily, it seems to me that there is an elephant in this room that we're trying to say is no different from the rest of the furniture.)

Peter
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