Re: extlang (was Re: Suggested language for "mis" (Re: [Ltru] RE: ISO 639-2 decision: "mis"))

Stephane Bortzmeyer wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 19, 2007 at 08:26:01AM -0700,
>  Addison Phillips <addison@yahoo-inc.com> wrote 
>  a message of 47 lines which said:
> 
>> I guess I agree about adding "Macrolanguage" to the registry, except
>> that extlang, if preserved, already indicates this with "Prefix".
> 
> Let me check that I understand. The only way, currently, to see if a
> language is a macrolanguage is to check if there exists at least one
> extlang which references it in its Prefix field? Correct?
> 
> So, in SQL:
> 
> SELECT Languages.code AS macrolanguage, count(Extlangs.code) AS Extlangs 
>       FROM Languages,Extlangs WHERE Extlangs.prefix = Languages.code 
>       GROUP BY Languages.code ORDER BY Languages.code; 
> 
> Which yields 54 macrolanguages in 4645bis, zap (Zapotec) being the one
> with the most extlangs, 58 (if we do not count the sign languages).
> 
> Am I correct? (Sorry for using the IETF for my e-learning but I prefer
> to check before commenting.)

Essentially correct.

Note that the proposals I've seen weren't to add pointers in the 
macrolanguage's record to the extlangs, but rather an additional pointer 
in the extlang to the macrolanguage. That strikes me as pointless except 
for the grandfathered ISO 639-2 codes enclosed by macrolanguages that 
can't be extlang.

I take it you're suggesting (or interpreted the proposal) to mean that 
the macrolanguage would contain a pointer or pointers to its 
sublanguages. Hence something like:

%%
Type: language
Subtag: zh
Description: Chinese
...
Encloses: yue,cmn,.....
%%

Is that what you had in mind? Note that this type of field could apply 
even when various grandfathering rules (hello "sh", etc.) don't permit 
the use of extlangs.

Addison

-- 
Addison Phillips
Globalization Architect -- Yahoo! Inc.
Chair -- W3C Internationalization Core WG

Internationalization is an architecture.
It is not a feature.

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