Re: [Ltru] Consensus call: extlang

Kent Karlsson scripsit:

> The 630-* ISO standards have a hierachy "baked in", though not
> explicitly, until ISO 639-5:2008, Codes for the representation
> of names of languages -- Part 5: Alpha-3 code for language families
> and groups (which I haven't seen a copy of yet)

The most recent version I know about is two years old, self-confessedly
incomplete, and has 105 code elements, of which 53 are shared with 639-2.
It is not clear why the nine remaining 639-2 collection code elements
(bad, btk, day, ijo, kar, kro, nah, son, znd) do not appear.

> The hierarchy is still implicit in parts 1-3 which have collection
> codes (part 1 has only, if you pardon the expression, half-hearted
> collection codes, zh and ar).

Parts 1 and 3 have macrolanguage and individual language code elements.
Part 2 has language collection and individual language code elements.

> I understand that you do not want tags like gem-deu, but you seem
> to want to have tags like zh-yue. For "identification purposes"
> (as well as much else) the approach for both those examples seem
> to be the same. 

Nobody treats all the Germanic languages as a single language for
any purpose.  Many people treat Chinese as a single language for many
purposes or even for all purposes.

-- 
John Cowan    cowan@ccil.org    http://ccil.org/~cowan
This great college [Trinity], of this ancient university [Cambridge],
has seen some strange sights. It has seen Wordsworth drunk and Porson
sober. And here am I, a better poet than Porson, and a better scholar
than Wordsworth, somewhere betwixt and between.  --A.E. Housman
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