[Ltru] Re: Numerical region subtags (RE: extlang)

"Doug Ewell" <dewell@adelphia.net> Wed, 21 March 2007 06:02 UTC

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From: Doug Ewell <dewell@adelphia.net>
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Subject: [Ltru] Re: Numerical region subtags (RE: extlang)
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Don Osborn <dzo at bisharat dot net> wrote:

> So the Africa numerical region subtags have not been defined/adopted 
> by IETF-languages, but the Latin America numerical tag "419" has? 
> (Hence es-419?) Not that I'm planning on it, but if there were a need 
> for a tag for say East African Swahili or for African French, one 
> would need to make the proposal to IETF-languages?

Addison replied:

> What Doug is saying is: the codes and what they mean are defined by 
> the UN, not by separate registration on the ietf-languages list.

I think there are two sources of misunderstanding here; that's one of 
them.  The other stems from the presence of the tag "es-419" in the 
Registry.  It was registered in the late RFC 3066 era when we knew the 
numeric region subtags were going to be available shortly.  We had 
previously argued over a tag for "Latin American Spanish" and it became 
clear that we could register "es-419" almost for free -- it would meet 
the immediate need without adding another grandfathered tag (or variant 
subtag) to the mix.

The ietf-languages group no longer registers whole tags, but rather 
subtags.  At the same time, all of the UN numeric code elements that 
represent macro-geographical areas -- all of them -- are available using 
the generative model.  So the presence of the redundant tag "es-419" in 
the Registry is a historical curiosity only; it is no more or less 
legitimate than "sw-014" or "fr-002", the two tags Don asked about.  You 
can use those tags today if you like.

My list of six numeric subtags dealing with Africa was copied from the 
Registry, not from the UN list.

There are a few UN M.49 code elements that have not been carried over as 
region subtags, the ones that represent economic groupings.  An example 
is 199, "Least developed countries."  This group includes countries as 
diverse (geographically and linguistically) as Cape Verde, Bangladesh, 
and Vanuatu; such groupings would be pointless in language tags.  (By 
comparison, Don has shown clearly what others have disputed, that there 
is a demand for macro-geographical subtags and that they can have 
meaning.)

--
Doug Ewell  *  Fullerton, California, USA  *  RFC 4645  *  UTN #14
http://users.adelphia.net/~dewell/
http://www1.ietf.org/html.charters/ltru-charter.html
http://www.alvestrand.no/mailman/listinfo/ietf-languages


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