Subject: Re: [Ltru] Re: Ltru Digest, Vol 19, Issue 88

From: "Mark Davis" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 1 Oct 2006 11:30:37 -0700

Script tags are applicable to instances of languages. A particular instance
(document, record, span) may be Latn or Latf, for example. Our
interpretation of Zxxx is the same: marking an instance as being unwritten.
The other interpretation wouldn't be particularly useful.

Mark

On 9/30/06, Doug Ewell <[email-masked]> wrote:
>
> Mark Davis <mark dot davis at icu dash project dot org> wrote:
>
> > Let's not make up problems where they don't exist. I see no
> > groundswell, nor any realistic prospect of a groundswell, of people
> > tagging languages with unnecessary scripts.
>
> +1 to that.
>
> > Now, this is all getting away from Karen's quite reasonable desire to
> > provide people more clarity on the fact that for material that is only
> > non-written it isn't a good idea to include a script subtag. I could
> > even see, in some applications, tagging records with, for example,
> > zh-Zxxx, meaning unwritten Chinese. Then I could search records for zh
> > (meaning any zh, no matter whether spoken, or written in traditional,
> > or written in simplified, or written in pinyin), or filter that to
> > only non-written, or only simplified, or only romanized.
>
> Hold on, Zxxx is defined as "Code for unwritten languages."  I don't see
> that as meaning the same as "linguistic content that is not written."
> Then again, I'm the literalist who argued for years that "sign language
> as used in the United States" wasn't the same as "American Sign
> Language."
>
> --
> Doug Ewell  *  Fullerton, California, USA  *  RFC 4645  *  UTN #14
> http://users.adelphia.net/~dewell/ <http://users.adelphia.net/%7Edewell/>
> http://www1.ietf.org/html.charters/ltru-charter.html
> http://www.alvestrand.no/mailman/listinfo/ietf-languages
>
>
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---

From: "Doug Ewell" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 1 Oct 2006 19:44:19 -0700

(Sorry for munging the Subject line earlier.)

Mark Davis wrote:

>> Hold on, Zxxx is defined as "Code for unwritten languages."  I don't 
>> see that as meaning the same as "linguistic content that is not 
>> written."
>
> Script tags are applicable to instances of languages. A particular 
> instance (document, record, span) may be Latn or Latf, for example. 
> Our interpretation of Zxxx is the same: marking an instance as being 
> unwritten. The other interpretation wouldn't be particularly useful.

It might be; someone more familiar than I with Ethnologue might be able 
to find a language that has no written form.  Keeping Karen's examples 
in mind, there might possibly be a need to tag some spoken content with 
a specific indication that this language is unwritten -- maybe similar 
content for other langauges has a text subtitle or whatever.

I'm not really sure language tagging can be expected to indicate the 
spoken vs. written mode of a piece of content, which is the impression I 
got from what Mark wrote.  I suppose I wouldn't argue strongly if we 
attempted to adopt this rather loose interpretation of "unwritten 
language," but after the sign-languages experience I'm wary about loose 
interpretations.

--
Doug Ewell  *  Fullerton, California, USA  *  RFC 4645  *  UTN #14
http://users.adelphia.net/~dewell/
http://www1.ietf.org/html.charters/ltru-charter.html
http://www.alvestrand.no/mailman/listinfo/ietf-languages