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language, for easy reference.

Comments are marked by ****

John Clews

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Ethnologue:
KARACHAY-BALKAR [KRC] lang, Russia, Europe, USA

Ballot:
___  I accept/do not accept the alpha-3 identifier
"krc" for Karachay-Balkar (if to be included)

Result:
The item has NOT been approved for inclusion, and a second round is needed.
[One language or two?]

****    COMMENT (JPC): regarded as a single literary language throughout
        the Soviet period.

        There may be the option to have three codes,
        for Karachay-Balkar, Karachay and Balkar,
        as for
        Serbo-Croat, Serbian, and Croatian.

        One (Karachay, I think) also has a long history as a literary
        language in classical times, which I don't think Balkar did.

        In passing, as a librarian I know from British Library days
        that a lot of books exist explicitly in Serbo-Croat, and not
        in Serbian or Croatian, so deprecation was arguably
        incorrect, and it should no longer be deprecated.

        Serbo-Croat was constructed by a major linguist in the 19th
        and 20th centuries, as a language bringing together dialects
        from various parts of the country, much as was probably done
        for Karachay-Balkar, and in may ways what was done in Nynorsk
        (I forget the names of the linguists concerned).

        That's rather a long winded way of saying that there's a
        reason to give a code for Karachay Balkar, as requested: it
        wouldn't conflict with any later request for providing
        further codes for Karachay and Balkar separately, if such
        were requested.


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--
John Clews,
Keytempo Limited (Information Management),
8 Avenue Rd, Harrogate, HG2 7PG
Email: [log in to unmask]
tel: +44 1423 888 432;

Committee Member of ISO/IEC/JTC1/SC22/WG20: Internationalization;
Committee Member of ISO/TC37/SC2/WG1: Language Codes