Re: Montenegrin has been given an ISO 639-3 code

> "sr-ME" doesn't fall into any of these categories: it wasn't in the old tag
> registry (which is what John means by "de novo"); it does follow the modern
> syntax (of course); all of its individual subtags are registered; and it does
> mean what the individual subtags imply.

More important: it should not be deprecated. It is a valid and well-formed tag. It has rather more sense than some other valid and well-formed tags (tlh-Cyrl-AQ), even if some users or applications will prefer to use the new ISO 639-3-based subtag. If that subtag is, over time, preferred by users and applications for Montenegrin, then "sr-ME" will be irrelevant. If it isn't, then the subtag will be no more problematic than 'arq' (Algerian Arabic) is to the tag "ar-DZ" (Arabic as used in Algeria). 

To John's point, the Serbo-Croatian complex of languages/dialects is probably more complex than is accounted for by the generative scheme and currently registered subtags in BCP47 anyway. But a deep breath and studiedly ignoring the problem is probably the best course :-).

Addison

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ietf-languages [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of
> Doug Ewell
> Sent: Saturday, November 18, 2017 8:18 PM
> To: John Cowan <[email protected]>
> Cc: IETF Languages Discussion <[email protected]>
> Subject: Re: [Ietf-languages] Montenegrin has been given an ISO 639-3 code
> 
> I wrote, off the top of my head:
> 
> > Grandfathered tags are defined as being irregular, i.e. not following
> > the BCP 47 syntax.
> 
> which is not entirely correct.
> 
> Grandfathered tags were in the pre-4646 tag registry and fall into two
> categories:
> 
> (1) those that are irregular according to the BCP 47 syntax (e.g.
> "sgn-BE-FR")
> 
> (2) those that are syntactically regular, but cannot be broken down
> semantically into a series of BCP 47 subtags, either because the "extlangs"
> aren't registered as extlangs (e.g. "no-bok") or the "variant" isn't registered
> as a variant (e.g. "zh-guoyu"), or if they are, the tag doesn't mean what the
> subtags individually mean.
> 
> "sr-ME" doesn't fall into any of these categories: it wasn't in the old tag
> registry (which is what John means by "de novo"); it does follow the modern
> syntax (of course); all of its individual subtags are registered; and it does
> mean what the individual subtags imply.
> 
> --
> Doug Ewell | Thornton, CO, US | ewellic.org
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Ietf-languages mailing list
> [email protected]
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf-languages