RE: [ltru] Initial language registry draft

["Peter Constable" <petercon at microsoft.com>]

> From: ltru-bounces at lists.ietf.org [mailto:ltru-bounces at lists.ietf.org] On Behalf Of
> Karen_Broome at spe.sony.com


> 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?

I think there are several cases in which it would be useful to include alternate names for a given language in the registry. (By that, I don't me names in additional languages.) Ethnologue tries to document alternates. (There is room for some improvement; e.g. I think it could do a little better job at how it tracks names used in different countries, and it could perhaps distinguish truly alternate names from mere alternate spellings‎.) ISO 639 also does this to some extent (it is possible to add alternate names where not already listed). 

For purposes of this registry, I think the initial registry should stick with what is published in ISO 639-1/-2, and that any additions people may desire should be handled by the ietf-languages registration process.



Peter Constable

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