Re: [Ltru] Macrolanguage usage

Leif Halvard Silli wrote:
> >  a) See above quote, which I see as saying that extlangs will
> >     not provide the benefits claimed by the extlang proponents.
> 
> 
> The benefits are for the minority language users, in contexts of
> negotiation between majority and minority encompassed language.
> Would be interesting to hear more why you don't see any benefits.

As others have said already:

1) Fallback to language tag prefix does not apply to content
   negotiation (except as an extraordinary measure for misconfigured
   web browsers).

2) Even when fallback to language tag prefix does apply, it is more
   often than not inappropriate to fall back to a macrolanguage. In
   many cases it would be *akin to* letting Norwegian fall back to
   German (or any other Germanic language), just because both languages
   are Germanic (and German is "larger" than Norwegian; English is even
   "larger", but using that in this example would cloud my point since
   most (not very old) people that know Norwegian also know English).
   That would be bad, not only for language understandability reasons,
   but in some cases it can also be politically sensitive. Both of
   which we should stay out of.

3) Language preference lists, for content negotiation and similar, is
   a more general approach, and is easier to apply in a non-extlang
   model than in an extlang model (as examples from others have shown),
   avoiding numerous "q=0" entries to rule out some languages.

> >  b) The exceptions to extlang application, for various reasons,
> >     like for nn/nb and other instances, are already numerous.
> 
> 
> nn/nb is a situation where the the mutual command of all the (two)
> encompassed languages by all native speakers is fostered. Wheras

Even so, and even though 'no' ('nor') is a macrolanguage code for nn/nb
(or nno/nob), extlang does not apply to nn/nb for backwards compatibility
reasons.

> >  c) No extlangs is a simpler model, both syntactically and
> >     use-wise, and often have advantages over extlangs.
> > 
> > So a no-extlang model is simpler to explain and apply, and
> 
> For whom?

Everyone. Users, software developers, you and me, this WG, IETF, IANA, ...
A language code can then always be in the first position, not sometimes
mostly arbitrarily forced to be in the second position (as an extlang).
It will not introduce new false fallback to prefix, not introduce new
politically sensitive fallbacks/prefixes, leave users with more easily
managed language preference lists, etc.

	/kent k

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