Kent Karlsson <kent dot karlsson14 at comhem dot se> wrote:
> Though not formally a language tag, Wikipedia, for instance, uses
> fiu-vro (a collection code augmented extlang style with a home-grown
> code for Võro) as the language prefix for Võro Wikipedia, not
> et-something. Not that I think using a collection code that way is at
> all good (or even use macrolanguage codes that way), I'm just noting
> that they DON'T use et-... .
Using a collection code may not be good, but making up their own
3-letter subtag 'vro' is just about the worst thing anyone can do with
language tags. If the tag they need doesn't exist, they should be using
a private-use tag, such as "x-voro" or "fiu-x-voro" or even "qaa". As
long as they have a page somewhere that shows their assignments, that's
their "private agreement." Or they could request a registration on
ietf-languages. Anything is better than making up their own tag in the
non-private space.
Unfortunately, it's not the only time Wikipedia has done that, and it
doesn't even matter if the code already exists in ISO 639-3:
- "bat-smg" for Samogitian ('smg' is Simbali)
- "cbk-zam" for Zamboanga Chavacano ('zam' is Miahuatlán Zapotec)
- "map-bms" for Banyumasan ('bms' is Bilma Kanuri)
and probably others; I stopped checking after three examples.
This is much worse than slightly imprecise tagging, or tagging that
doesn't exhibit perfect fallback behavior; this is cowboy tagging.
--
Doug Ewell * Arvada, Colorado, USA * RFC 4645 * UTN #14
http://www.ewellic.org
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