Dear all,
I don't know why this is being discussed now. However, I have two very
general comments:
(1) It is ABSOLUTELY NOT CORRECT to say that Bokmål and Nynorsk are
dialectal variants of Norwegian (as Rebecca also correctly points out, and I
am not arguing against Rebecca on this; but the statement has been repeated
several times even within the "language coding environment").
(2) To extend 639 (both parts) to include mechanisms like the one suggested,
would MOST CERTAINLY mean that we would have to withdraw the current
document and re-think the whole coding mechanism. Had we started with the
work today, I probably would be in favour of a more flexible and structured
approach, based on linguistic as well as political criteria.
We all know that we have language variations based on a large number of
factors: time, geography, sociolinguistic criteria, orthographic
conventions, etc. There are also frequently useful to be able to identify
groups of languages (in Scandinavia the "language" "Scandinavian" is
sometimes used to identify conference language, meaning "da + no (+ nb + nn)
+ sv").
We MAY want to start working on the "ultimate language coding standard", but
we DO NOT want to patch the current standards without having a goal for the
exersise.
Best regards,
Håvard
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Håvard Hjulstad mailto:[log in to unmask]
Rådet for teknisk terminologi
(Norwegian Council for Technical Terminology)
Postboks 41 Blindern
NO-0313 Oslo, Norway
(besøksadresse/visiting address: Forskningsveien 3 B)
tel: +47-23198040 faks: +47-23198041
http://www.rtt.org/
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Rebecca S. Guenther [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Tuesday, April 25, 2000 4:38 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Dialects-- Extension mechanism
>
> For dialects that do not satisfy criteria we might establish for adding a
> separate language code, we need to consider a mechanism for extension.
> This came up in regard to the Norwegian codes (although not dialects I
> realize, but I felt that a similar solution was needed). In March I
> circulated the proposal below. Some reacted that we had already approved
> the Norwegian codes and couldn't change them and that this was a major
> change to the standard. I do not think that this can wait until the
> standard is up for review in 3 years, since we will certainly have to deal
> with dialects in the meanwhile.
>
> I propose that we consider this mechanism, and if we can agree upon it,
> that we pursue establishing an amendment to the standard. This would
> involve balloting the change with the member bodies.
>
> The examples below are for Norwegian, but you could substitute any dialect
> of another language (e.g. Valencian as a dialect of Catalan):
>
> cat-val (ISO 639-2)
> or
> ca-val (ISO 639-1)
>
> Please comment.
>
> Rebecca
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 16:23:28 -0500 (EST)
> From: Rebecca S. Guenther <[log in to unmask]>
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: IMPORTANT PROPOSAL
>
> To ISO 639/JAC:
>
> We had a meeting here at the Library of Congress of catalogers who are
> applying the language codes, and the difficulty of applying the three
> Norwegian codes was made clear. It was felt that at least in the U.S.
> and probably most places outside of Norway those applying the codes may
> not have the expertise to be able to determine and it may not be
> desirable for searching and retrieval purposes to make such fine
> distinctions. There is also the problem that there exists two forms of the
> language, one based on Danish and one on Old Norse (this taken from
> Havard's ISO/DIS 639-l Annex C), while there are now 3 codes. As Havard
> stated at our meeting, this is a national rather than international need,
> although all of these codes are needed in Norway.
>
> This is a case that is bound to come up time and time again in this
> standard, when local needs conflict with international needs. Those of us
> maintaining large bibliographic databases and producing large numbers of
> records may not be able to or want to make the fine distinctions that
> might be made in the countries where the language is spoken.
>
> Therefore I would like to propose the following solution. The new codes
> that were approved (nno and nob) would be appended onto the more general
> code for Norwegian. Thus, a hierarchical type of coding would be used:
> nor-nno Norwegian Nynorsk
> nor-nob Norwegian Bokmaal
> For the alpha-2 list we would do the same, although I would argue that
> only the alpha-3 code would be needed as an extension:
> no-nno Norwegian Nynorsk
> no-nob Norwegian Bokmaal
> An alternative could be using the alpha-2 code as the second part:
> no-nn
> no-nb
>
> We could consider applying this mechanism in the future where needed for
> these types of situations, but we would NOT go back and look at the codes
> we have as to whether others are similar.
>
> This solution would be consistent with the ISO 3166 subentity codes, where
> the code for a subentity is attached to a country code to be more
> specific. It would also be consistent with the direction in the current
> proposed revision to RFC1766, where it is stated that a subtag may be used
> in conjunction with a language code (example is: no-nynorsk, no-bokmaal).
> The only difference is that a code would be used for the subtag, rather
> than a language name.
>
> I would like to open up discussion on this proposal during the next
> several days. Please consider it and comment between now and next Tuesday,
> 7 March. Then I will send out a voting form and we will vote on it.
>
> Although we have previously voted on these codes, I don't see this
> possible change as a complete reversal of that decision, but a
> reformulating of how the codes are presented.
>
> I look forward to your comments.
>
> Rebecca
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