Re: [Ltru] "X" vs. 'X (macrolanguage)"

Kent Karlsson wrote:

> Regarding 2:
>
> tnz   I L Tonga  Tonga (Thailand) 4
> tog   I L Tonga  Tonga (Nyasa) 4
> toi   I L Tonga  Tonga (Zambia) 4
> ton to I L Tonga  Tonga (Tonga Islands) 4
>
> Given the geographical spread here, it seems unlikely that these four 
> are all related...
> And Ethnologue says they are not related, not even the Nyasa (Malawi) 
> and Zambia ones.

I'm satisfied that they are unrelated, and I'm convinced that if they 
were, SIL would have noticed this and coded or described them 
differently.  I don't see any disagreement here.

> Regarding the country parentheticals, I'm not too happy about them 
> either. A language may well be spoken, in a significant fraction, 
> outside of the country of origin.

The parenthesized country names are just to indicate which Tonga we are 
talking about.  Ethnologue shows that Tonga (Thailand) is also spoken in 
Malaysia.  (Ignore the bit about "may be extinct" for now; it's an 
example.)

> And the display names, in at least one display name generator, will 
> turn out strange. Take tnz as an example:
>
> tnz            Tonga (Thailand)
> tnz-TH       Tonga (Thailand) (Thailand)
> tnz-MY      Tonga (Thailand) (Malaysia)

Do you have an alternative suggestion that will satisfy the WG members 
who want Description fields to match the ISO names?

For user interfaces, of course, you can rename these languages as you 
please.

--
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

_______________________________________________
Ltru mailing list
Ltru@ietf.org
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ltru