Re: [Ltru] my technical position on extlang

Hoi,
The current situation is that the biggest amount of content on the Internet
is not tagged. Languages that are "less and least resourced" can not be
found because standards and software both do not acknowledge them. There is
a glimmer of a hierarchy in extlangs but in reality they are there to
explain historic facts and make all these "hierarchies" seem to be the same
type, something they are not.

In my understanding it is only in the ISO-639-6 that a true hierarchy of
linguistic entities becomes available. When you consider the complexity and
size of this work, it will take years to get to grips with it. The current
tools ie mail and mailing lists are completely inadequate to the task for
the LTRU to deal with this.

I feel that this is a true committee and the result is likely to show it. If
that is the best that is on offer then so be it. In a way it is business as
usual and the biggest advantage is that it still prevents a move forward
warts and all.
Thanks,
      Gerard

On Sat, May 24, 2008 at 10:16 AM, Leif Halvard Silli <lhs@malform.no> wrote:

> John Cowan 2008-05-24 02.11:
> > Mark Davis scripsit:
> >
> > > If you don't have any data to back up your assertion that "The best is
> the
> > > enemy of the good."....
> >
> > So your argument is that languages are *less* likely to be mutually
> > intelligible (to some degree) if they are co-members of a macrolanguage
> > than if they are not?
> >
> > All I need is to show that the tendency is the other way: that (a)
> > getting Cantonese when you want Mandarin is no worse than getting
> > Portuguese when you want French (i.e. both are equally bad); and (b)
> > that getting Egyptian Arabic when you want Sa'idi Arabic is better
> > than getting English when you want Greek.
> >
>
> My support to John here.
>
> At the same time, I think that the really important and compelling
> argument is *identification*.
>
> I feel that Mark is willing to accept semantically less clear
> identification in order to, technically, be better able to prevent
> (sometimes) unwanted fallback. Thus if I, in my argumentation have been
> eager to secure fallback, Mark has been very eager to prevent it. These
> are two sides of the same coin.
>
> However, some unwanted fallback is always unavoidable, even across
> un-encompassed languages.  And I agree with John that fallback within
> the same macrolangauge very often is wanted - or at least totally
> acceptable and understandable.
>
> The one argument against extlang I would bring - though I don't know if
> it is an argument against anything - it is merely a fact: In the talk
> about dropping extlang, it was set up as the ultimate goal taht 'zh'
> would fall out of use, sometime in the very distant future.
>
> Contrary to this, the extlang is almost like a blessing of 'zh' and
> 'ar'. And if extlang had been introduced to Norwegian as well, then it
> would have made 'no' much more used. I am not sure that this is bad,
> though.
> --
> leif halvard silli
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