Re: [Ltru] Macrolanguage, Extlang. The Sami language situation as example

["Mark Davis" <mark.davis at icu-project.org>]

I may have been the quotee; let me elaborate slightly.

If 'zh' hadn't existed, or had been clearly specified to be only Mandarin, then I doubt that 639-3 would have introduced a new code as a macrolanguage for that and other codes. I was not trying to say that macrolanguage made no sense, or that it wasn't well defined, but that I think it was defined so as to deal with a particular issue in coding.

After all, many people consider "gsw" to be a "kind" of German, but there is no macrolanguage that encompasses both "de" and "gsw", and the same can be said for many, many languages. So I don't think there was an attempt to search out *all* the cases where sets of language codes were related and considered a single entity for some purposes, and make macrolanguage codes for all of them; more to deal with those cases where a code had existed in 639 or some other standard.

Peter can correct me if I have this wrong.

Mark

On Thu, May 29, 2008 at 5:39 PM, Doug Ewell <doug at ewellic.org> wrote:

"Phillips, Addison" <addison at amazon dot com> wrote:

>> I'm one of apparently few people who truly believe the ISO 639-3/RA
>> definition of "macrolanguage," and don't think of it as some kind of
>> cover story.
>
> Since we have the direct testimony of the folks who conceived of
> macrolanguage, I don't see any reason why anyone would believe
> otherwise.

It's been claimed often on this list that macrolanguages are nothing but
a standardization kludge or "shim" between ISO 639-2 and 639-3.  Here is
a direct quote from this list, from less than two weeks ago:

"According to everything I've heard, the macrolanguage was devised as a
construction which is an attempt to rationalize inconsistent approach to
languages used by previous versions of ISO 639. It does not represent
any particularly reality beyond that."

That is completely different from the ISO 639-3/RA definition, thon, the one
Peter has quoted and paraphrased numerous times, the one I believe:

"In various parts of the world, there are clusters of closely-related
language varieties that... can be considered distinct individual
languages, yet in certain usage contexts a single language identity for
all is needed....  Where such situations exist, an identifier for the
single, common language identity is considered in this part of ISO 639
to be a macrolanguage identifier."

The first quote says macrolanguages do not represent reality; the second
(ISO) quote defines them in terms of reality.

The ISO definition is a "cover story" if it is simply an attempt at a
legitimate-sounding explanation for what is really, under the surface, a
kludge.  I think if the RA really felt they were a kludge, they would
have come out and said so (perhaps using a more dignified term than
"kludge").  But the reality is there are plenty of situations, in all
walks of life, where people think in terms of "the Chinese language" or
"the Arabic language" and do not (need to) distinguish between the
individual languages.

Note, once again, that this is not an argument for or against extlang.

--
Doug Ewell  *  Arvada, Colorado, USA  *  RFC 4645  *  UTN #14
http://www.ewellic.org
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--
Mark

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