RE: [Ltru] Extended language tags

[Peter Constable <[e-mail]>]

The Dinka language development activities sound like there are similarities to what has been going on in the Philippines, where it was decided to engineer a pan-Philippine language "Filipino" as an amalgam with greatest dependence initially on Tagalog.

In that case, a new language name was created -- and a new ISO 639 ID. One could apply a similar approach in the Dinka case, except that the sociolinguistics appear to be different: from your description, it sounds like the speaker community has a conception of an encompassing linguistic unity, and 639-2 has had an ID that is comparable in scope.


Peter

-----Original Message-----
From: Andrew Cunningham [mailto:[e-mail]]
Sent: Thursday, October 04, 2007 6:02 PM
To: Shawn Steele
Cc: [e-mail]
Subject: Re: [Ltru] Extended language tags

Throwing in my two cents worth:

One aspect of language tagging is the preference for the tags to be as
specific as possible. In some cases it is desirable to be less
specific.

An example i mentioned on the teleconference was the case of Dinka. In
ISO-639-2 this is represented by the language code "din".

While ISO-639-3 have the following language codes:

dib     South Central Dinka
dik     Southwestern Dinka
dip     Northeastern Dinka
diw     Northwestern Dinka
dks     Southeastern Dinka

If I was applying a langauge tag to a Rek grammar, then i'd use "dik",
for a collection of Ciec folktales I'd use "dib". For a collection of
Bor proverbs I'd use "dks".

To describe the literacy materials and class room materials being
developed in Australia by the Dinka community, I'd use "din". Within
the diaspora and in Australia specifically the literacy and language
teachers, translators and interpreters are discussing a standardized
approach to written Dinka.

The original SPLA/M education policies highlighted Rek as a standard
for written Dinka. What seems to be occurring is an amalgam based on
Rek, but including aspects and vocab from other Dinka dialects. There
will be a locally hosted conference next year to thrash out some of
the issues.

In this context "din": would be the most appropriate way of tagging
the new educational material, while keeping the existing five
iso-639-3 language tags to more accurately describe information and
data written in one of the 20 odd specific dialects.

from the perspective of the user community, an extlang approach would
make more sense, i.e. Rek labeled as "din-dik" makes more sense than
"dik". To the community Rek is a Dinka langauge, Dinak Rek, not a
separate language called Rek.

In this sense extlang reflects the communities understanding of their language.

This is just an observation, i'm neither for or against extlang.

Although from the perspective of web development and how CSS and web
browsers handle psuedo langauge selectors and attribute selectors, I'd
suggest that extlang approach simplifies things for those rare
individuals amongst us that use these selectors.

Andrew
--
Andrew Cunningham
State Library of Victoria, Australia

[e-mail]
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