- From: Tex Texin <tex@i18nguy.com>
- Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 18:17:30 -0800
- To: Martin Duerst <duerst@w3.org>
- CC: John Cowan <jcowan@reutershealth.com>, Jon Hanna <jon@hackcraft.net>, www-international@w3.org, ietf-languages@alvestrand.no
I have created a web page from John's list.
The page will probably go up before I can add all of the suggestions offered.
We can review the list entries and I will add the suggestions as time allows
and the list solidifies.
I'll post the URL for the list, after John gets a chance to review what I have
done with it.
tex
Martin Duerst wrote:
>
> At 22:33 04/12/13, John Cowan wrote:
>
> >I have such a list, have had it for years, and have never been able
> >to get anyone to review it. Specifically it is a list of xx-yy and
> >xxx-yy combinations that reflect the Ethnologue's information on
> >"national and official" languages of particular countries.
> >
> >I have excluded languages that are only national/official in a single
> >country: thus Swedish is on the list (it is official in both Sweden
> >and Finland, and in fact takes sharply divergent forms in the two
> >countries), but Danish is not (official only in Denmark).
>
> I think whether a language is official or not in a certain country
> is not really relevant to whether to use the country designation or
> not. Whether the forms in each of the countries are actually
> significantly divergent (e.g. different grammar, orthography,
> different vocabulary) is what's relevant. Thus just taking
> the Ethnologue as a base doesn't give the right result.
>
> Also, any list, when published, should avoid the impression that
> if it contains a two-part language code, that language always
> has to be used with a two-part code. For each language affected
> (e.g. en), there sure is a large number of examples where the
> difference doesn't matter, and in that case, using more than
> the language itself as a label would be wrong.
>
> Regards, Martin.
--
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Tex Texin cell: +1 781 789 1898 mailto:Tex@XenCraft.com
Xen Master http://www.i18nGuy.com
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Received on Tuesday, 14 December 2004 02:18:10 UTC