Re: 2 many language tags for Norwegian

Leif Halvard Silli scripsit:

> In theory, that's the matter. But the matter in this particular case, is 
> that - apparently - some libraries maps thing as both Nynorsk, Bokmål 
> and Norwegian.

More likely some libraries use only 'no' -- the original state of affairs --
because they cannot or do not want to distinguish between nb and nn.
Other libraries want to make the distinction, so 639-1 provided separate
tags for their use.  However, they did not and would not deprecate 'no'.

> Just so it is noted: If a Norwegian user finds a book that is tagged as 
> "Norwegian", then the user can only guess what it means. No Norwegian 
> user will think that such a book has to be Bokmål, for instance.

Understood.  But isn't it more *likely* to be so, just because there
are more Bokmål books overall?

> And if that was the case: Why not allow two language tags for Norwegian 
> documents as well?

There is no problem in principle with assigning a document more than one
tag -- it's just that nobody does it.

-- 
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and the leaders of tomorrow: the Bill of        cowan@ccil.org
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Received on Monday, 28 April 2008 05:18:11 UTC