 |
 |
These are my final comments on Peter Constable's "Issues to resolve in ISO 639." The languages discussed here were included in sections 7 and 8 of the document. I apologize for the length of time this has taken. Many of these issues are very challenging. Milicent Wewerka, Library of Congress ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Akan/Fanti/Twi. According to my experience with these terms, this is a case where the ethnic terms do not correspond to the linguistic situation. Although there is apparently only one language, there is an ethnic split between the Fanti and the other groups who recognize Twi as an acceptable name (primarily the Ashanti and Akwapem). This appears to be similar to the Karachay-Balkar situation (or Serbo-Croatian?) where there are two ethnic groups with different names, but the groups share a single language that lacks a mutually acceptable name. I believe the government of Ghana decided to use Akan as the term for the language and the groups collectively. The proposed solution to use [tw/twi] for all varieties of the language would include the language of the Fanti under a term they do not recognize as applying to their language. If we must combine all varieties under one designation, I think [aka] would be better. There is also the possibility that we might consider [aka] as the designation for the Akan language and recognize [fat] and [tw/twi] as representing specific dialects of the Akan language. The ISO standard does recognize the possibility of including separate entries for dialects in 639-2. Serbo-Croatian. If Serbian, Bosnian, and Croatian are recognized as separate languages, then documents, Web sites, etc. should be identified as being in one of these languages. How then would a macro-language entry be used? Would it be used in those cases where the text cannot be identified as a specific language? Some librarians have had difficulty in recognizing these languages, but I am told that native speakers normally have no such difficulty. Moldavian/Romanian. Of the various options presented it seems undesirable to follow option 2 or 4. Option 2 would allow [mo/mol] as a synonym for [ro/ron/rum] without deprecating the combination for Moldavian. If we agree that there is only one linguistic entity, then there should be only one set of entries for the language and one set should be deprecated. Option 4 recommends allowing a script distinction. I think that is a bad precedent. One possibility that was not presented was to consider Moldavian a dialect of Romanian. There is some support for this treatment. Voegelin & Voegelin list Moldavian as equivalent to "Eastern Daco-Rumanian" with standard Romanian being equivalent to "Southern Daco-Rumanian." Ethnologue also lists Moldovan or Moldavian as a dialect of Romanian. This treatment would allow the continuation of both Romanian and Moldavian in the ISO code. However, it is difficult to distinguish the official written forms of language from Romania and Moldova. This makes the application of the code problematic. Turkish/Ottoman Turkish. A proposal to eliminate the distinction for Ottoman Turkish was debated for the MARC list some years ago. Convincing arguments were made at that time that the 1928 language revisions were more extensive than script, extending to vocabulary and other features. For library usage, option 2 would be more in keeping with this position. Option 2 would treat Ottoman Turkish as a distinct historical variety of Turkish. This would be similar to other instances of historical varieties in the code list, although the date of linguistic change would be more recent than other cases, which have dates of 1500 or other earlier times. Central American Indian/North American Indian. I am reluctant to redefine MARC usage here because of the disruption to past files in libraries. While it seems strange to include some U.S. languages under "Central American," certain linguistic classifications support the inclusion of the Tanoan languages with languages in Mexico. Merritt Ruhlen treats Tanoan, Uto-Aztecan, and Oto-Manguean as members of "Central Amerind." Papuan. I agree with the proposal to define Papuan as all non-Austronesian languages of the New Guinea region. This corresponds to the intention of the MARC list. South American Indian. The intention of the MARC list is that this group is purely geographical. Unlike the Central American Indian grouping, which includes a specific family regardless of location, the South American Indian list should include only those languages used in South America. However, there are a few languages that are spoken in both Panama and Colombia. In those cases MARC practice has assigned the language to [sai]. This situation also arises with [cai] and [nai] for languages outside "Azteco-Tanoan" that are used both in Mexico and the United States. A decision must be made and recorded for each language.