I don't expect this to contribute to the solution of the current main discussion, so I have marked this off topic. At 06:52 08/05/31, Peter Constable wrote: >> From: ltru-bounces at ietf.org [mailto:ltru-bounces at ietf.org] On Behalf Of >> Phillips, Addison > > >> I think you might be ascribing too much meaning to the concept of >> macrolanguage. Macrolanguage records a particular relationship that >> exists between language *codes* assigned by ISO 639, which is that some >> language codes assigned by ISO 639-3 are encompassed by codes assigned >> previously to a broader range of languages. The macrolanguage has >> little to do with the *actual* linguistic relationship between the >> encompassed languages (save that the association tends to exist because >> the languages are related somehow). > >Well, a bit more than that: they have to be closely related. English and >Hindi are related; many linguists consider Mandarin and Tibetan to be >related. But these would never have been combined in a macrolanguage > >But as for what can be assumed in terms of intelligibility between >encompassed languages, your follow-on statement is certainly valid: > >> Many languages that do not have a >> macrolanguage mapping are actually more closely related or mutually >> intelligible than some pairs of macrolanguage related languages. The term "mutually intellegible" has been used a lot, in my understanding implicitly always with a binary yes/no implication. In my experience, I understand "mutally intellegible" more in terms of time. It may take me a few seconds to adapt to somebody's English accent e.g. from California, slightly longer for somebody from Boston, ever longer for New York or Texas, several minutes or close to an hour to feel confident with an Australian or Indian accent, and so on. In each case, it's not only accent, it's also some vocabulary shift. It may then take me several days to start to understand some Duch, and maybe several weeks for some of the Scandinavian languages, although on the scale of days or weeks, I have more experience with Romance languages. Was/is there any consideration about such a scale when defining languages e.g. for ISO-639-3? Regards, Martin. #-#-# Martin J. Du"rst, Assoc. Professor, Aoyama Gakuin University #-#-# http://www.sw.it.aoyama.ac.jp mailto:duerst at it.aoyama.ac.jp _______________________________________________ Ltru mailing list Ltru at ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ltru
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