[ltru] Initial language registry draft

[Karen_Broome at spe.sony.com]

See issue below...  forwarded to the list for comment. 

The registration of language name synonyms would definitely be useful to 
me when I reference the RFC 3066 work. Persian/Farsi, Bangla/Bengali, 
Irish/Gaelic/Scots Gaelic, and Catalan/Valencian cause a lot of headaches 
on the language lists I review.

I do realize synonym registration could be controversial. For my purposes, 
Catalan, Balear, and Valencian are synonyms, but I'm sure there's a 
linguist out there who would disagree. I think Ethnologue and SIL are 
working on language synonyms. Could these synonyms be incorporated for the 
languages found in 639-1 and 2? Do you have any thoughts on this Peter?

Karen Broome
Metadata Systems Designer
Sony Pictures Entertainment




"Doug Ewell" <dewell at adelphia.net>
07/09/2005 12:31 AM

 
        To:     <Karen_Broome at spe.sony.com>
        cc: 
        Subject:        Re: [Ltru] Re: I-D ACTION:draft-ietf-ltru-initial-01.txt


Hi Karen,

> Are you looking for comments on your draft of the registry entries? I
> think I may have a few additions based on some of my research, though
> this is my first look at this doc and I don't have much background on
> it.
>
> For example: Would it be appropriate to add "Bangla" as a description
> under the "Bengali" entry?
>
> I see these as two separate entries on a lot of the lists I've
> reviewed.

This is a good question.  I copied the descriptions directly from the
relevant ISO and UN standards as much as possible.  This was to avoid
charges of bias or personal whimsy.  For example, for the region subtag
KP, I dutifully used the ISO 3166 description "Korea, Democratic
People's Republic of" even though I, and probably you and everyone else
either of us knows, would call this country "North Korea."

Because the official ISO 639-2 code list did not include the name
"Bangla" along with "Bengali," I did not include it.

That said, it is true that the name "Bangla" is also common,
particularly among native speakers when writing in English and referring
to their language.  It might be reasonable to entertain requests for
additional description fields in the initial registry, but if you want
to pursue that, I think we should move this question onto the WG list.
It's their registry, after all, not just mine.  :-)  Remember that
additional descriptions can always be proposed for registration (Section
3.3, item 2) and that description are not normative in any case.

Thanks for the feedback.

--
Doug Ewell
Fullerton, California
http://users.adelphia.net/~dewell/







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