On 06/12/2002 04:55:57 PM John Clews wrote:
>> Is there sufficient documentary evidence for justification of a
>> 2-letter symbol?
>I don't have accurate figures to hand, but there are around 5 million
>speakers of Yi languages/dialects, with probably 6 well-established
>varieties of Yi languages/dialects in China, and with most literary
>use focused on one of those, as I understand.
>
>There will be thousands of books, newspapers and periodical issues
>printed in Yi over the last two or three decades...
One might respond by asking whether that fits with the criteria described
in ISO 639-1, which makes reference to recommendation by an authority,
existence of a substantial body of documentation "written in specialized
languages as well as a number of terminologies in various subject fields",
number of speakers, recognised status, and support from some official body.
I don't want to debate whether "Yi" fits the appropriate criteria. I am
wondering, though, what the long-term expectations are with regard to
two-letter identifiers. These were developed originally by ISO
terminologists primarily for their own use e.g. in other ISO standards.
They are getting used in other places, but some of those other applications
do not make sense for two-letter codes. E.g. they are used in the
internationalisation infrastructure of Java and at least some Unix
implementations for "locale" identification (identification of anything
culture-related, which would include multilingual text), but two-letter
codes are not adequate for such uses since the number of languages users
will eventually want supported by those infrastructures goes well beyond
676.
I'm inclined to think that the number of appropriate applications for
two-letter codes is probably limited, and that there should be
clarification of when people should or shouldn't be asking for two-letter
codes. Most people should be asking for three-letter codes, period.
For instance, in the recent request for a two-letter code for Hawaiian, I
didn't see any indication that a two-letter code was needed for
terminilogical purposes -- the main reason I saw was for Unix locales. So,
I would have thought it appropriate to respond by saying that we can't
afford to dole out two-letter codes for an application context that is
likely in the next decade or so to have expanded needs that would more than
exhaust the number of available two-letter codes, and that the
infrastructure for which those codes are requested needs to be brought up
to date to use three-letter codes.
It may be that a two-letter code for "Yi" is warrented, but I guess rather
than see two-letter codes as something useful that people want for their
languages, I think we should be changing mindsets to look upon two-letter
codes as something of limited use that are of interest in certain
situations only, and that three-letter codes are what most people should be
after.
- Peter
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Peter Constable
Non-Roman Script Initiative, SIL International
7500 W. Camp Wisdom Rd., Dallas, TX 75236, USA
Tel: +1 972 708 7485
E-mail: <[log in to unmask]>
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