- From: John Burger <john@mitre.org>
- Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 11:10:45 -0500
- To: "Elizabeth J. Pyatt" <ejp10@psu.edu>
- Cc: www-international@w3.org, ietf-languages@alvestrand.no
Elizabeth J. Pyatt wrote: > As a linguist, I would want a taxonomy to describe all spoken > languages/dialects. For instance, there is no :"language code" for the > different spoken Chinese forms (e.g. Cantonese, Hakka, etc) and using > a country code would not be adequate to distinguish them. I dithered and finally removed the following from my earlier message, but damn the torpedos, I'll just say it: In general, I've always been disappointed at what I perceive to be a bias in the language codes toward text. The inability to distinguish Cantonese and Mandarin without pretending they are dialectal variants, is one example, and the way all sign languages are lumped together is another. - John D. Burger MITRE
Received on Tuesday, 14 December 2004 16:10:54 UTC