CE Whitehead <cewcathar at hotmail dot com> wrote:
Doug, I see that ISO 639-3 is all macro-languages and individual languages (http://www.sil.org/ISO639-3/codes.asp); I guess then I just want an explanation of where language subtag elements are assigned a scope value of collection; I see no "collections" listed among the ISO 639-3 codes since 2.3 of the draft mentions this.
OK, I finally see what you are talking about, and you are right -- there are a couple of exceptional cases that the text doesn't explain very well.
In the current Registry there are two subtags in particular, 'bh' for Bihari and 'him' for Himachali. By definition, based on their type and length, these came from ISO 639-1 and 639-2 respectively. They are not encoded in either ISO 639-3 or 639-5, but they are listed on the ISO 639-3 Web site as "collective" codes. See:
http://www.sil.org/iso639-3/codes.asp?order=reference_name&letter=b http://www.sil.org/iso639-3/codes.asp?order=reference_name&letter=hISO 639-2 does include code elements for language collections, but they aren't formally identified with a special property the way they are in 639-3. Instead, 639-2 has a guideline (stated in their FAQ) that "The words 'languages' or '(Other)' indicates that a language code is a collective one." Evidently this naming convention was not applied to these two code elements, and perhaps that explains why ISO 639-5 failed to pick them up as collections.
So to summarize, the last sentence in draft-4645bis-06, Section 2.3, paragraph 4, is incorrect or at least misleading:
"Language subtags corresponding to code elements that were identified in [ISO639‑3] as representing collection codes, but not listed in [ISO639‑5], were also assigned a Scope value of 'collection'."
These language subtags are indeed identified *on the ISO 639-3 Web site* as representing collection codes, but I suppose it's not really correct to say they are so identified *in ISO 639-3*. They are assigned in 639-2, but not identified there as collections, either formally or informally. They are also not encoded in ISO 639-5.
I propose the following replacement for this sentence:"Existing language subtags corresponding to code elements that were identified by the [ISO639‑3] Registration Authority as representing collection codes, but not assigned in either [ISO639‑3] or [ISO639‑5], were also assigned a Scope value of 'collection'."
Does that solve the problem? -- Doug Ewell * Thornton, Colorado, USA * RFC 4645 * UTN #14 http://www.ewellic.org http://www1.ietf.org/html.charters/ltru-charter.html http://www.alvestrand.no/mailman/listinfo/ietf-languages ˆ _______________________________________________ Ltru mailing list Ltru at ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ltru
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