Håvard, thank you very much for your answer.  Of course I feel the same way.  I wanted to tell our correspondent that I had consulted the JAC, and now I can.

 

Lucas Graves ([log in to unmask])

Cooperative Cataloging Program Specialist

Data Integrity Section

Policy and Standards Division

Library of Congress

Washington, DC 20540

 

(Nothing in this message is to be taken as a statement of official LC policy, etc.)

 

From: ISO 639 Joint Advisory Committee [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Håvard Hjulstad
Sent: Tuesday, December 07, 2010 9:24 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: SV: Catalog/Authority Record Errors (fwd)

 

Dear all,

 

There are of course hundreds of alpha-3 (and alpha-2) identifiers that may as words “mean” something in the language in question or in any other language. We surely cannot start considering this when assigning identifiers!

 

Best regards,

Håvard

 

--------------------

Håvard Hjulstad

  (prosjektleder / Project Manager)

  Standard Norge / Standards Norway

  [log in to unmask]

--------------------

 

Fra: ISO 639 Joint Advisory Committee [mailto:[log in to unmask]] På vegne av Graves, David Lucas
Sendt: 7. desember 2010 13:26
Til: [log in to unmask]
Emne: FW: Catalog/Authority Record Errors (fwd)

 

I doubt that this is a serious question, but I thought it best to forward it to you. Because the bibliographic code for Albanian is [alb], it isn't a issue in the library world.

 

Lucas Graves ([log in to unmask])

Cooperative Cataloging Program Specialist

Data Integrity Section

Policy and Standards Division

Library of Congress

Washington, DC 20540

 

(Nothing in this message is to be taken as a statement of official LC policy, etc.)

 

-----Original Message-----
From: David Williamson [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Monday, December 06, 2010 1:21 PM
To: Policy and Standards Division
Subject: Catalog/Authority Record Errors (fwd)

 

---------- Forwarded message ----------

Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2010 08:52:38 -0500

From: [log in to unmask]

To: [log in to unmask]

Subject: Catalog/Authority Record Errors

 

This data was submitted on: Friday, December 3, 2010 at 08:52:38

 

form = Library of Congress Online Catalog/Authority Record Error Report Form

 

lccn = N/A

title = Mr

author =

mode = Library of Congress Online Catalog number = Only this record error_description = I have noticed that the 3 character long country code for the Albanian language is a offensive word to the native Albanian language.

 

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ISO_639-1_codes

 

The word in question is "sqi"

 

Where "qi" is "to f*ck" and where the "s" turns a word into a negative word.

 

Therefore the "s'qi" in Albanian means "I can't F*ck"

 

I do not mean to sound ignorant about this but I thought this would be the right place to report this.

 

regards

 

name = Valtid Caushi

client_email = [log in to unmask]

 

browser = Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.7 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/7.0.517.44 Safari/534.7