Re: [Ltru] Re: extlang

John Cowan <cowan@ccil.org> Tue, 04 September 2007 03:46 UTC

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Date: Mon, 03 Sep 2007 23:46:47 -0400
To: Addison Phillips <addison@yahoo-inc.com>
Subject: Re: [Ltru] Re: extlang
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Addison Phillips scripsit:

> Thus, if I were to support extlang, it would be based solely on John 
> Cowan's argument that we need extlang to prevent a "retagging crisis" 
> for languages formerly enclosed by a macrolanguage.

Indeed, I think this is the most important point.  RFCs come and go,
but tagging decisions ought not to have to be revisited.  We have already
obsoleted some IETF or semi-IETF tags in favor of ISO ones, but there's
no getting away from that.

> 2. Randy suggested (a long while ago now) that cherry-picking from the 
> macrolanguage list would be a bad idea. Yet tag stability provisions 
> prevent us from taking the list wholesale.

Three macrolanguages with seven encompassed languages, all accounted
for by the same pre-existing principle (stability), hardly counts
as cherry-picking.

> And I have some concern that the macrolanguage "collections" (if you'll
> pardon this inaccurate term) have yet to be thoroughly tested. They
> may not be stable or suitable in the short-to-medium term. This is
> not a critique of ISO 639-3's work here. It is merely a note of caution.

I'm not sure what counts as testing in this case.  Can you explain further?

> If I were to support doing extlangs, it would consider each 
> macrolanguage separately, as a one-time-event, and, again, solely as a 
> compatibility item.

That's pretty much what SIL (read Peter C) actually did.

> Note that we also face our own exception--I assume future sign languages 
> would be treated as extlangs for compatibility reasons. Note that sign 
> languages are NOT macrolanguages in the first place--they are already 
> exceptional. I would favor eliminating this use of extlang too.

That's a point I hadn't considered.  New sign languages do arise.

> ... but I feel that we're doing a disservice to the various languages 
> involved by making them extlangs. Shouldn't Cantonese, Wu, or Hakka be 
> treated fully as languages? 

The fact is that people don't: they are *not* treated fully as languages
except by linguists and people strongly influenced by them.

> Users can still use the macrolanguage tag instead (I doubt we'll see
> much 'cmn-*' when 'zh-*' is available).

Exactly.  People will continue to use "zh", but those who want to be more
explicit can use "zh-cmn", just as people who want to be explicit about
script can use "zh-Hans".  With extlangs, there is a soft choice between
"zh" and "zh-cmn" rather than a hard choice between "zh" and "cmn".

-- 
Where the wombat has walked,            John Cowan <cowan@ccil.org>
it will inevitably walk again.          http://www.ccil.org/~cowan


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