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ISOJAC  January 2004

ISOJAC January 2004

Subject:

ISO 639-2 code for Spanish

From:

"Rebecca S. Guenther" <[log in to unmask]>

Reply-To:

ISO 639 Joint Advisory Committee <[log in to unmask]>

Date:

Tue, 13 Jan 2004 15:34:59 -0500

Content-Type:

MULTIPART/MIXED

Parts/Attachments:

Parts/Attachments

TEXT/PLAIN (141 lines) , 180.doc (141 lines)

To ISO JAC members:

See my correspondence with this person about the 3-character code for
Spanish. I don't know if you all remember the history and the fact that we
only have "spa" as a code for Spanish. My response below details that
history.

According to ISO 639-2, "spa" is used until after the 5 years that were
agreed upon before a code (identifier) could be changed. Then it is up to
the JAC to decide. Since ISO 639-2 was published in 1998, the 5 years is
just up. Now we need to decide what to do.

It is against all of our principles to change already defined codes that
may exist to identify languages. One would expect that in most cases
outside of the bibliographic community, which has the code "spa", the
2-character code would have been used. According to the RFC, for use on
the Internet the 2-character code is used and if it is not defined, then
the 3-character code is used. Since there is a 2-character code for
Spanish, it is not an issue for Internet usage. As stated below, this
person wants to allow for use of either 3 or 2 character code. He is not
happy with "spa" since it is not based on the vernacular.  However, we
have stated that we do not change existing codes.

This is a bit of a dilemma. One thing to be considered is whether the
3-character list has been used in its entirety for terminologic purposes
(i.e. outside of the bibliographic community, which has used only the
639-2/B codes). What impact would this sort of change make?

Comments?

Rebecca

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 27 Oct 2003 17:26:30 +0100
From: "[iso-8859-1] Lang Gérard" <[log in to unmask]>
To: 'Rebecca S. Guenther' <[log in to unmask]>
Cc: "[iso-8859-1] Håvard Hjulstad (E-mail)" <[log in to unmask]>,
     "Anila. Angjeli (E-mail)" <[log in to unmask]>,
     "[iso-8859-1] Lang [iso-8859-1] Gérard" <[log in to unmask]>,
     "Wischhoefer (E-mail)" <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: RE: ISO 639-2/T code for spanish


Dear Rebecca,


Thank you very much for your answer to my question.

 My problem is as follows :

I am writing the draft for the sixth edition of ISO 3166-1, where we are
going to introduce the name of the countries (or territories) in the
"national(s) or official(s) language(s)" of each country (or territory). So
we have to give codes for identification of the (names)  of the "official(s)
language(s)" used by each country or territory in ISO 3166-1.

And we cannot use only ISO 639-1, because some official languages (like
Palauan in Palau, Seselwa creole french in Seychelles, Tetum in Timor-Leste,
or Tok pisin in Papua New Guinea) have ISO 639-2 codes but no ISO 639-1
codes.

So we decided to give both ISO 639-1 and ISO 639-2/T (because, for this
application ISO 639-2/T is more correct than ISO 639-2/B) codes for each
official language in ISO 3166-1. And, as spanish is used 20 times for this,
I think that I have no choice but to ask to the ISO 639/RA-JAC what is the
correct ISO 639-2/T code for spanish at the end of the year 2003 or at the
beginning of year 2004.

Très cordialement.

Gérard LANG


N.B. : You will find with this mail my note 180 concerning "officials
languages" appearing in ISO 3166-1.

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Previous messages:

From [log in to unmask] Tue Jan 13 15:26:19 2004
Date: Fri, 24 Oct 2003 17:14:47 -0400 (EDT)
From: Rebecca S. Guenther <[log in to unmask]>
To: "[iso-8859-1] Lang Gérard" <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: ISO 639-2/T code for spanish

    [ The following text is in the "X-UNKNOWN" character set. ]
    [ Your display is set for the "US-ASCII" character set.  ]
    [ Some characters may be displayed incorrectly. ]

When ISO 639-2 was developed by a joint working group of ISO/TC37
(Terminology) and ISO/TC46 (Information and Documentation), the TC37
representatives wanted to use the code "esp" for the ISO 639-2/T code for
Spanish. As you may know, ISO 639-2 has 2 code sets, one for terminology
purposes and one for bibliographic (they actually only differ in 22 of the
450+ codes in the list). Because "esp" had already been used in
bibliographic databases to mean something else (Esperanto), it could not
be used in ISO 639-2 as the terminology code. A principle in the
development of the list was that codes could not be reused, but if there
was an exception made, that they not be reused for 5 years. So that time
would just be up this year.  

However, this could not be done without going through the change process
of the ISO 639-2 maintenance agency. Actually, I do not think there are
many, if any uses of the ISO 639-2/T codes. This is because of RFC 3066,
which defines how language codes might be used on the Internet. That
standard says that if there is a 2-character code, use it; if not use the
ISO 639-2 3-character code. Since Spanish has a 2-character code ("es"),
that is what is used.  In other applications, this question has not come
up.

I will bring this issue up to the ISO 639 Joint Advisory Committee if you
wish to pursue it.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
^^  Rebecca S. Guenther                                   ^^
^^  Chair, ISO 639-2 Maintenance Agency                   ^^
^^  Senior Networking and Standards Specialist            ^^
^^  Library of Congress                                   ^^
^^  Washington, DC 20540-4402                             ^^
^^  (202) 707-5092 (voice)    (202) 707-0115 (FAX)        ^^
^^  [log in to unmask]                                          ^^
^^                                                        ^^
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^


On Fri, 24 Oct 2003, [iso-8859-1] Lang Gérard wrote:

> What is the interpretation of note 6,page 25, of ISO 639-2 concerning the
> change of "spa" by "esp" as ISO 639-2/t code for spanish?
> And what is the date of effect of this note (" after a period of five years
> from the publication of this standard,...." ?
> Thank you for responding.
>       Gérard LANG
> convenor of ISO TC 46/WG2  
> 
> 
> [log in to unmask]
> 


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