[Ltru] Re: Macrolanguage and extlang

On Sat, Jul 14, 2007 at 08:26:21AM -0400,
 Don Osborn <dzo@bisharat.net> wrote 
 a message of 524 lines which said:

> The fallback language issue (mentioned in the example re Breton)
> raises another question: can there be more than one fallback
> language?  In the case of many of the crossborder languages in
> Africa (such as Hausa, Swahili, Wolof, Fula, Tsonga, Oshiwambo,
> etc.) this would be helpful.

Breton was just an example and I do not think that anyone suggested to
add such information in the registry. It would require a lot of work,
anyway. Case in point: you're in Helsinski (Finland) and you want to
ask someone something. You do not speak Finnish. What do you try?

* Swedish (administrative best fit, since it is the second official
language in Finland),

* Hungarian (linguistic best fit, since it is the closest language),

* English (practical best fit, since it is probably the best
fallback, in practice).

Trying to make a registry of such "best fits" is a work of a size
comparable to ISO 639.

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