Re: Macrolanguage (was: Forms for Montenegrin)

Michael Everson wrote:

>> "Macrolanguage" is completely an ISO 639-3 concept.
>
> The term is odd, but it’s a familiar concept in linguistic
> classification.

The odd term has a very specific meaning in 639-3. Some people mistake 
it for "a collection of languages" or "a group of genetically related 
languages," which miss the point. But anyway.

> You imply that Montenegrin’s would either have no macrolanguage (but
> it is not a linguistic isolate) or that its macrolanguage would be
> anything other than Serbo-Croatian. But neither of those would be
> correct.

The reasonable thing for 639-3 to do, now that this code element exists 
in 639-2, would be to assign it and call it an encompassed language 
under [hbs]. But there are never any guarantees. (The truly reasonable 
thing to do would have been to not assign [cnr] at all, since 
Montenegrin is Serbian.)

>> Not only is this the law (RFC 5646, Section 3.1.10), it's also a good
>> idea. If we were able to apply our judgment to this case, we would
>> open the door to endless debates about other macro/encompassed
>> language decisions, and we would essentially be wrestling this
>> responsibility away from 639-3/RA. I for one wouldn't want to get
>> embroiled in this, especially considering how many people don't
>> understand what a macrolanguage really is.
>
> In this case, I disagree. There is no implication that we would be
> obliged to act in such a way for any other language.

We'll agree to disagree. If BCP 47 did allow us to make this decision 
(which it doesn't), I don't see how we could defer other macrolanguage 
requests (which we have already had) to 639-3. We would have to approve 
or disapprove them.

> Last year they published in February. In this case I think I would
> like to disapprove your current change request until the the 639-3
> changes are published. There’s no point in making IANA make any
> changes twice for this subtag.

Section 3.4 (15)(a) talks about preparing this proposal "as soon as 
practical" after the ISO 639 code is assigned, and Section 3.5 talks 
about the proposal being acted upon "[s]oon after the two-week review 
period has passed." We may have some wiggle room here in the interest of 
reducing IANA's workload by one record. Hopefully ISO 639-3/RA will 
actually do what we assume they will do, in the time frame we assume, 
and hopefully there will not be protests from Montenegrin nationalists 
in the meantime.

--
Doug Ewell | Thornton, CO, US | ewellic.org

_______________________________________________
Ietf-languages mailing list
[email protected]
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf-languages