If I understand you correctly, you’re saying that Part 2 can
continue to use “Germanic (Other)” but that Part 5 and “639 as a database” will
use “Germanic”. Is that right?
Peter
From: ISO 639 Joint
Advisory Committee [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Håvard Hjulstad
Sent: Thursday, December 20, 2007 12:20 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: decision required: "other" collections
I have with
interest followed the discussion relating to "remainder groups". The
issue is actually discussed in Part 5, which will soon be finalized. The
definition is as follows:
2.7
remainder
group
language
group (2.6)
with the explicit exclusion of
specified
languages
NOTE 1 In ISO
639-2, a typical example of a remainder
group is “gem”
= “Germanic (other)”, which has the
extension of
all languages and language groups belonging
to the Germanic
language family with the exception of all
individual
languages and language groups within that
family that
have separate identifiers in ISO 639-2.
The issue is
also discussed in Part 4, which identifies this as an implementational issue,
not an issue relating to defining linguistic entities.
It became quite
clear early in the Part 3 development process that this needed to be sorted
out. That is the background for the wording in Part 5 (and Part 4). Depending
on how many, e.g., individual Germanic language that an implementation uses,
the value of "gem" will be different. In fact, "gem" can
only have a stable meaning in implementations that just uses "gem" as
meaning "Germanic languages"; in all other cases "gem" will
mean "the Germanic languages that we in this implementation have decided
not to encode in more detail, which may change tomorrow".
Part 2 is
the only stable subset of the 639
alpha-3 code (so far defined). For the purpose of Part 2 all "group
identifiers" are used to denote "remainder groups" (with the
exception of those cases where sub-items of a group has been individually
identified). For the purpose of Part 2 the designation "Germanic
(other)" still makes sense. For the purpose of the entire 639 it doesn't
(or possibly it has a different meaning).
This
has to be seen as an
implementational issue, where Part 2 is an "implementation". And it
has to be described properly as such. This needs to be described in Part 4 in a
correct and understandable way. The issue cannot be solved by changing the
"names" in Part 2.
As I see it,
the future "639 as database" will have one entry "gem" with
the generic name "Germanic languages", a link to a proper description
of "language groups and remainder groups", links to all sub-items
(regardless of Part 2 or Part 3), and a very clear mechanism to show which sub-items
are covered by "gem" as a remainder group for implementations using
the defined subset of Part 2.
Håvard
--------------------
Håvard
Hjulstad
Standard Norge / Standards Norway
Postboks 242, NO-1326 Lysaker
besøksadresse / visiting address: Strandveien 18
tel: (+47) 67838600 | faks / fax: (+47) 67838601
direkte tel / direct tel: (+47) 67838645
[log in to unmask]
http://www.standard.no/
--------------------