Re: [Ltru] Is 639-3 bogus ?

John Cowan wrote:
> Addison Phillips scripsit:
> 
>> I was hoping that 639-3 would provide the information on what is 
>> or is not considered a macro-language. But this information isn't 
>> it.
> 
> "Scope" means "individual language or macrolanguage".  You can
> deduce from the registry which are which; a macrolanguage is one
> that appears as the Prefix of some extlangs.

What I was looking for was:

   http://www.sil.org/iso639%2D3/macrolanguages.asp

And:

   http://www.sil.org/iso639%2D3/scope.asp#M

Ideally, extended language subtags would be restricted to the list in 
the first link above and 4646bis would reflect that fact. I don't want 
to construct that list from the registry: I would prefer something much 
more cut-and-dried, i.e. getting it from ISO 639-3.

I can see at least one problem with the macro languages list: there are 
at least some languages (the "Serbo-Croatian" family) that will be 
grandfathered into language subtags rather than extlangs.

Now, all that said, I think it would be useful to include a "type" field 
for "collective" languages (with the warnings about their suitability 
proposed by John) and for "macro" languages (defining what can be used 
as a prefix value in an extlang).

However, I can also see that this information does not necessarily need 
to occur in the registry.

Addison

-- 
Addison Phillips
Globalization Architect -- Yahoo! Inc.

Internationalization is an architecture.
It is not a feature.

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