Re: [Ltru] Re: extlang

Mark Davis scripsit:

> Having arq and the other dozen or so languages on
> http://www.sil.org/iso639-3/documentation.asp?id=ara as primary language
> tags is not a problem. The real problem is having either arb or ar-arb,
> since we already have the tag "ar" which in practice means the same
> thing, widely used in a great deal of software. Introducing either
> arb or ar-arb essentially introduces a synonym for ar, and synonyms
> just cause problems.

1) Introducing arb should not be lumped with introducing ar-arb, as a
filtering (as distinct from lookup) request for ar will find content
tagged ar-arb, but will not find content tagged arb.  That alone is
enough reason to forbid arb.

2) The argument that ar-arb and ar are in practice the same (an argument
inherently limited to written, rather than recorded spoken, documents)
proves too much.  In practice, fr and fr-FR are the same, but nobody
insists that fr-FR be forbidden, or that fr must not match fr-CA for
filtering purposes.

> Given the set of imperfect options, I think the best one is (a)
> enhance the registry, as I suggested, and (b) either don't encode
> arb, or encode and deprecate it (and do similar things for the other
> macrolanguages that are in widespread use), and (c) not have extlang.

Apart for the substantive objections to this procedure, it also leaves
us open to a (perfectly legitimate) charge of cherry-picking.  It is
not up to us to decide which particular macrolanguage to handle how.

[ak encompasses fat and twi; no encompasses nb and nn; sh encompasses bs,
hr, and sr]

I agree that these are annoyances, but I deny that they are anything
more than annoyances.

-- 
They do not preach                              John Cowan
  that their God will rouse them                cowan@ccil.org
    A little before the nuts work loose.        http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
They do not teach
  that His Pity allows them                         --Rudyard Kipling,
    to drop their job when they damn-well choose.   "The Sons of Martha"

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