Subject: [Ltru] Proposal: include new "Language-Type:" field

From: John Cowan <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 4 Oct 2006 09:42:00 -0400

A proposal:

The 4646bis registry should capture the language type information from
ISO 639-3.  Each language, including macrolanguages, is labeled in -3
as either living, extinct, ancient, historic, or constructed.  These
terms are defined precisely at http://www.sil.org/iso639-3/types.asp .
Though informative rather than normative, this is very useful to help
shrink the large number of languages to a more manageable size.

The current draft of 639-3 contains 6989 living languages, 417
extinct languages, 114 ancient languages, 53 historic languages,
and 24 constructed languages.  The codes 'mul', 'und', and 'zxx' are
special cases.

The registry should also capture the individual language vs.  language
collection information from ISO 639-2.  If a code element appears in
-2 but not in -3, it is a language collection; there are 68 such code
elements.  Now that we have 639-3 code elements for essentially every
language on the planet, language-collection subtags are extremely vague
and provide little guidance to the recipient.

(I'm not really happy with the vagueness of "Language-Type", and would
prefer "Language-Status", but it's the term used in the FDIS.)

I propose the following language for 4646bis section 3.1.2:

o Language-Type
        o Language-Type's field-body contains one of the values
          'collection', 'extinct', 'ancient', 'historic', 'constructed',
          or 'special'.  This field MUST NOT appear except in records
          of type 'language'.

And here's a draft of the new section 3.1.3.8:

3.1.3.8.  Language-Type field

        The field 'Language-Type' MUST only appear in records whose
        'Type' field-body is 'language'. This field MUST NOT appear
        more than once in a record.  Most of the language records in
        the registry represent individual living languages.  This field
        indicates those which are not.

        The value 'collection' indicates a language collection appearing
        in ISO 639-2 but not ISO 639-3.  The values 'extinct', 'ancient',
        'historic', and 'constructed' indicate languages which are so
        designated in ISO 639-3; precise definitions of these terms can
        be found in that standard.  The value 'special' is used for the
        three subtags 'mul', 'und', and 'zxx', which do not actually
        designate languages at all.

Finally, here's a rule for section 4.1:

        8.  Language subtags with a 'Language-Type' field of 'collection'
        do not represent specific languages, and SHOULD NOT be used
        unless more specific information is unavailable.

Appropriate adjustments would be needed to 3.3, 3.4, and 3.5 as well.
We should be able to set this field if and when we ever register
a language subtag directly, and change it when 639-3 changes.

-- 
John Cowan
        [email-masked]
                I am a member of a civilization. --David Brin

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---

From: Addison Phillips <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 04 Oct 2006 08:33:15 -0700

This sounds like a reasonable proposal and a good way to deal with 
providing information related to subtag choice (especially for the 
vexing and vague collections).

Addison

-- 
Addison Phillips
Globalization Architect -- Yahoo! Inc.

Internationalization is an architecture.
It is not a feature.

---

From: "Mark Davis" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 4 Oct 2006 08:40:57 -0700

I think this is out of scope for the registry; our goal should be to have
sufficient description to identify the language (that is, to distinguish it
from others), and no more -- not to be the kitchen sink of information about
languages.

In addition, I don't see much of a need to duplicate information that is in
639, and I doubt that this additional information is "very useful to help
shrink the large number of languages to a more manageable size". Most people
will be picking among living languages, and this classification only
separates out 8% of those. Making a list of 7K languages 8% smaller is not
the key to an effective UI ;-). Those who need this information can go to
639 for it.

  living 6989 92.0%  extinct 417 5.5%  ancient 114 1.5%  historic 53 0.7%
constructed 24 0.3%  oddball 3 0.0%  total 7600

Mark

---

From: John Cowan <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 4 Oct 2006 12:33:19 -0400

Mark Davis scripsit:

> Most people will be picking among living languages, and this
> classification only separates out 8% of those. Making a list of 7K
> languages 8% smaller is not the key to an effective UI ;-).

I agree.  However, eliminating non-living languages from a listing of
languages indigenous to the U.S. (according to Ethnologue) reduces the
list from 238 to 162, a 32% reduction.

Using the Ethnologue "nearly extinct" category allows a further reduction
to only 92 languages, a full 62% reduction.  Unfortunately, 639-3 does
not use this type.

Peter C, could you enlighten us on what the language type information
in 639-3 is intended for?

-- 
Ambassador Trentino: I've said enough. I'm a man of few words.
Rufus T. Firefly: I'm a man of one word: scram!
        --Duck Soup                     John Cowan <[email-masked]>

---

From: "Randy Presuhn" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 4 Oct 2006 09:54:17 -0700

Hi -

> From: "Mark Davis" <[email-masked]>
> To: "John Cowan" <[email-masked]>
> Cc: <[email-masked]>
> Sent: Wednesday, October 04, 2006 8:40 AM
> Subject: Re: [Ltru] Proposal: include new "Language-Type:" field
>
...

As a technical contributor, I heartily agree.

Randy

---

From: Peter Constable <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 4 Oct 2006 16:04:07 -0700

The types and scopes grew out of Gary Simons and I analyzing the
existing 639 set as we tried to sort out what was in/out of scope for
639-3 and how things in 639-1/-2 related to things in Ethnologue 14.
Also, it was helpful for us in identifying which agency -- SIL or
Linguist List -- was the primary source. It was clearly necessary to
include scopes as they are used in normative ways, but we also thought
it was useful to include the types as that seemed helpful for users in
working out what the denotee is -- keep in mind that the only semantics
provided by the standard itself are in these attributes: name, type,
scope.

Peter

-----Original Message-----
From: John Cowan [mailto:[email-masked]] 
Sent: Wednesday, October 04, 2006 9:33 AM
To: Mark Davis
Cc: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: [Ltru] Proposal: include new "Language-Type:" field

Using the Ethnologue "nearly extinct" category allows a further
reduction
to only 92 languages, a full 62% reduction.  Unfortunately, 639-3 does
not use this type.

---

From: Stephane Bortzmeyer <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 9 Oct 2006 10:49:00 +0200

On Wed, Oct 04, 2006 at 09:42:00AM -0400,
 John Cowan <[email-masked]> wrote 

> A proposal:

+1
 
> The 4646bis registry should capture the language type information
> from ISO 639-3.  Each language, including macrolanguages, is labeled
> in -3 as either living, extinct, ancient, historic, or constructed.

I think the more information, the better (*), IF AND ONLY IF:

** this new information does not require a new source when building
the registry, (because such a new source would complicate the building
process and would add one more dependency, would add one more standard
to track, etc),

** this new tag does not bother the existing parsers.

To me, this proposal comply with these two rules, so I agree with.

(*) : I let the UI people decide if this is useful for the specific
issue of trimming the language list ; but, even if they do not use it,
others may be.

---

From: "Mark Davis" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 9 Oct 2006 08:08:19 -0700

-1

I think this is outside of the scope of the registry. Where will this stop?
Population of languages? Geographic area spoken? Population density? .....

The purpose of the registry is to distinguish one language from another. No
more, no less.

Mark

---

From: Stephane Bortzmeyer <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 9 Oct 2006 17:13:58 +0200

On Mon, Oct 09, 2006 at 08:08:19AM -0700,
 Mark Davis <[email-masked]> wrote 
 a message of 66 lines which said:

> Where will this stop?

Where I said:

> > IF AND ONLY IF:
> >the registry,

> Population of languages? Geographic area spoken? Population density?

They are not in ISO 639, nor in any other "source standard" of the
language tag registry.

But I can add another criterium:

** this new information is "stable" (yes, I know that "stable" is
fuzzy but there is no doubt that the actual population figure is less
stable than the fact that it is a living language or not)

---

From: Marion Gunn <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 9 Oct 2006 16:59:53 +0000

To you and to me (and all other fully-employed persons) yes, it is,  
but to hobbyists it may well be an interesting activity to be  
perpetuated for ever/as long as gamers exist with more idle time on  
their hands than the likes of us. :-(
mg

On 9 Oct 2006, at 15:08, scríobh Mark Davis:

> -1
>
> I think this is outside of the scope of the registry. Where will  
> this stop? Population of languages? Geographic area spoken?  
> Population density? .....
>
> The purpose of the registry is to distinguish one language from  
> another. No more, no less.
>
> Mark

- -
Marion Gunn * EGTeo (Estab.1991)
27 Páirc an Fhéithlinn, Baile an
Bhóthair, Co. Átha Cliath, Éire.
* [email-masked] * [email-masked] *

---

From: Stephane Bortzmeyer <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 9 Oct 2006 21:37:31 +0200

On Mon, Oct 09, 2006 at 04:59:53PM +0000,
 Marion Gunn <[email-masked]> wrote 

> their hands than the likes of us. :-(

May be my english is too limited, but it seems quite insulting to
people who disagree with you? I suggest to *not* imply that
disagreement == lack of a real job and time to kill.

---

From: John Cowan <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 9 Oct 2006 15:57:32 -0400

> disagreement == lack of a real job and time to kill.

My apologies for hijacking the list, but an attempt to send
a private reply to you bounced from the address [email-masked]
with "No route to host: retry timeout exceeded".

Can you provide a working address on your outgoing email, at least
in the signature line?

-- 
John Cowan        http://ccil.org/~cowan   [email-masked]
Lope de Vega: "It wonders me I can speak at all.  Some caitiff rogue did
rudely yerk me on the knob, wherefrom my wits still wander."
An Englishman: "Ay, a filchman to the nab betimes 'll leave a man
crank for a spell." --Harry Turtledove, Ruled Britannia