Re: Language Identifier List up for comments

> In the RFC 3066 regime, the supranational regions aren't yet available,
only
> the UNSD countries.  Some of these are not sovereign states, true, but

'region' in this sense is not associated with UN regions; it is just a more
neutral term than country. 'territory' also works.

> The Standard German used in Liechtenstein is as different from German
Standard
> German as Swiss Standard German is, really?
yes

And the broader point is that whenever you are saying that xx-YY and xx-ZZ
have different denotations, you *are* saying that xx differs by country. In
that case you can't just say that xx-WW is "not recommended", you have to
say *which* country variant it is the same as.

> I assume China is an error on your part; en-CN is not on the list.
Yes, my mistake. It is from the comma being ambiguous; it belongs to the HK:
en-HK (Hong Kong S.A.R., China)

‎Mark

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "John Cowan" <jcowan@reutershealth.com>
To: "Mark Davis" <mark.davis@jtcsv.com>
Cc: <www-international@w3.org>; <ietf-languages@alvestrand.no>
Sent: Friday, December 17, 2004 09:15
Subject: Re: Language Identifier List up for comments


> Mark Davis scripsit:
>
> > First, best to always use region instead of 'country'. Many of the
regions
> > are not countries, and some people get miffed about it.
>
> In the RFC 3066 regime, the supranational regions aren't yet available,
only
> the UNSD countries.  Some of these are not sovereign states, true, but
> "country" is the best cover term for them.  "Region" suggests not only
> supranational regions, but also infranational ones like states/provinces
> or other subdivisions like "the Mid-Atlantic States".
>
> > Language identifiers (tags) as specified by RFC 3066, can have the form
> > lang, lang-region, and some other specialized forms, where lang and
region
> > are subtags using ISO codes. (There is a
> > [http://www.inter-locale.com/ID/draft-phillips-langtags-08.html proposed
> > successor] to RFC 3066 that extends this further.) However the RFC does
not
> > identify which lang-region identfiers do not distinguish a written form
that
> > is, for most localization purposes, materially different from that
> > distinguished by the corresponding lang identifiers.
>
> +1
>
> > de-LI absolutely has a meaning. de-LI is certainly as different from
de-DE
> > as de-CH is!
>
> The Standard German used in Liechtenstein is as different from German
Standard
> German as Swiss Standard German is, really?
>
> (The connotation of "de" does not include Swiss German nor other
_Mundarten_.)
>
> > If you want feedback on the table from those who have not memorized
country
> > codes, and to make it more comprehensible to people, I suggest you
include a
> > more descriptive name. Even better would be to have an alternate table
or
> > column, but that might be more maintanence for you.
>
> +1
>
> > And given such a list, some items stand out. It is unclear why you
should
> > have variants for English as in China or Israel, but not English as in
> > Russia or Egypt, for example.
>
> I assume China is an error on your part; en-CN is not on the list.
English
> is an official language of Israel (so it is in) but not of Russia or
Egypt.
>
> -- 
> John Cowan  jcowan@reutershealth.com  www.reutershealth.com
www.ccil.org/~cowan
> "The exception proves the rule."  Dimbulbs think: "Your counterexample
proves
> my theory."  Latin students think "'Probat' means 'tests': the exception
puts
> the rule to the proof."  But legal historians know it means "Evidence for
an
> exception is evidence of the existence of a rule in cases not excepted
from."
>

Received on Friday, 17 December 2004 17:31:47 UTC