Whilst being new to the field and recently tied up on other things, or perhaps because I am new, I have been thinking of ways by which ISO/TC 37 terminology work principles and practices can be employed to deal with some of the purely terminological problems I have already come across in the exisiting or about to exist 639 codes with regard to naming. The difficulty being to achieve that without upsetting the equally important need for stability in code elements already in widespread use (including the invaluable Ethnologue data and information about language families and groups). This theme started me thinking again and I believe a form of solution can be provided by having this in mind as a need to be addressed in the development of ISO 639-6 content. It does not of course affect the equally important issues currently being discussed of identifying precisely what the object is in the firsd place or allocating an identifier/code. IMO problems in precision using language go back to Wittgenstein's final understanding that we work best fuzzy so the problems arise when fuzzy or even a fuzzy approach to the attempt to be precise is not good enough for purpose. Chris ----- Original Message ----- From: Doug Ewell [mailto:dewell at adelphia.net] To: ltru at ietf.org Sent: Sat, 2 Dec 2006 00:09:31 -0800 Subject: [Ltru] Re: Alemanic & Swiss German Peter Constable <petercon at microsoft dot com> wrote: > On the one hand, we see Ethnologue use ???Alemannic??? in reference to the > genetic subnode. On the other, we see Ethnologue indicate that > ???Alemannisch??? is a name used to refer to the specific language also > known as ???Schwyzerd??tsch??? or ???Swiss German???. I don't know if this sheds light on anything, but there is a similar ambiguity in the English term "classical music." It can be used to mean either (a) the entire genre of so-called "serious" music, as contrasted with "popular" styles such as folk or rock, or (b) such music from the "classical era," spanning roughly from the mid-18th to the early 19th centuries. In one sense, Bach and Tchaikovsky were "classical" composers; in another sense they were not. Usually context makes it clear which of these senses is intended. It seems this would not be sufficient to disambiguate the name "Alemanic" in the Registry, however. Perhaps this is one of those cases where a brief and judicious Comment could be added, to the effect (assuming Peter's interpretation is correct) that "gsw" refers to only one language and other "Alemannic" language could be tagged using such-and-so subtag. -- 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 _______________________________________________ Ltru mailing list Ltru at ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ltru Whilst being new to the field and recently tied up on other things, or perhaps because I am new, I have been thinking of ways by which ISO/TC 37 terminology work principles and practices can be employed to deal with some of the purely terminological problems I have already come across in the exisiting or about to exist 639 codes with regard to naming. The difficulty being to achieve that without upsetting the equally important need for stability in code elements already in widespread use (including the invaluable Ethnologue data and information). This theme started me thinking again and I believe a form of solution can be provided by having this in mind as a need to be addressed in the development of ISO 639-6 content. It does not of course affect the equally important issues currently being discussed of identifying precisely what the object is in the firsd place or allocating an identifier/code. IMO problems in precision using language go back to Wittgenstein's final understanding that we work best fuzzy so the problems arise when fuzzy or even a fuzzy approach to the attempt to be precise is not good enough for purpose. Chris
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