RE: Language tags

Hi Jonathon

In answer to your questions. ISO 639-3 does not form part of BCP 47 yet.
The IETF LTRU are currently in the process of revising RFC4646 and the
successor will include the adoption of the ISO 639-3 code.

That aside, the reason why ISO 639-3 is not mentioned wrt the recent
discussions is that Norwegian, Nynorsk and Bokmal (sorry no diacritics this
early in the morning) have ISO 639-1 codes (alpha2) which take precedence
over alpha3's.  In other words, there are alpha2 codes for the 3 entities
mentioned and also alpha3's but you should use the alpha2 where available.
John C will explain it much more eloquently than I can.


Best regards

Debbie Garside
Editor ISO 639-6 (alpha4's :-))



> -----Original Message-----
> From: www-international-request@w3.org
> [mailto:www-international-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Jonathan Pool
> Sent: 25 April 2008 08:17
> To: www-international@w3.org
> Subject: Language tags
>
>
> Could somebody explain why BCP 47 mentions ISO 639-3 only
> twice as something that might someday become relevant, and
> the current discussants about Norwegian don't mention ISO
> 639-3? My impression has been that ISO 639-3 is being
> increasingly adopted for structured data as the usual basis
> for interoperable language reference and the persistence of
> ISO 639-1 codes in any standards that intend to be inclusive
> of the world's languages is a temporary inconvenience due to
> backward compatibility. If my impression is wrong, I'd be
> grateful for a correction. Thanks.
>
>
>
>

Received on Friday, 25 April 2008 07:56:03 UTC