Subject: [Ltru] Re: Is 639-3 bogus ?

From: "Doug Ewell" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Oct 2006 22:38:24 -0700

Frank Ellermann <nobody at xyzzy dot claranet dot de> wrote:

> Esperanto and Orcish don't play in the same league, that's a good "C", 
> it couldn't cause a problem _because_ it already made it into 639-2.
>
> Other good "C" not in 639-2 would be a problem, as far as registering 
> them individually as needed is a problem (in theory it should be 
> easy).

How do you determine which are "good C" and which are "bad C"?  By that 
I don't mean that Esperanto is "good" because it has 2 million speakers 
(Ethnologue) or Orcish is "bad" because it has only 30 words.  I want to 
know what general criteria you would use for the cases that are not 
nearly this obvious.

> This registration business (like RFC publication) boils down to 
> "filter nonsense and try to reflect some useful reality".  Some humans 
> do this, and if it's an open process with experts and appeals etc. we 
> hope that the outcome is good enough.

I for one am not going to claim to be the arbiter of what is "nonsense" 
in ISO 639-3.  You may do so if you wish.

To clarify:

I have no problem with the idea of going to the ISO such-and-so MA  and 
asking that a code element be added or deleted, or that a spelling be 
changed or something.

I have a big problem with setting up a protocol that claims to use ISO 
such-and-so, but then excludes some of its code elements, NOT because 
they cause a conflict or don't make sense with the protocol, but because 
somebody doesn't like them or finds them "ugly."  That is pure 
cherry-picking, of the type described by Bruce Lilly in December 2004, 
and it WILL get this draft rejected by IESG.

--
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

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---

From: Frank Ellermann <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 13 Oct 2006 09:53:38 +0200

Doug Ewell wrote:

> (Ethnologue) or Orcish is "bad" because it has only 30 words.

Actually I didn't look for "orq", I was curious if that...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talossan_language

...somehow made it into the "C" category.  I've no recipe how to identify
nonsense, it's one of those "I know it when I see it" things.  Of course
it could be wrong, it's difficult to draw the line somewhere.

For your example Yinglish I couldn't decode John's examples:

| Before I knew that he had said it in shiur, I was mechaven to the Rosh
| Yeshiva's pshat in the Gemara.
| So get off your tochus and write a letter to Joan Spanne [...]
| kvetching about it.

But that's an "L", no "C" and no "vanispamcruft" (en-x-wikipedi term
defined in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:VSCA)

> That is pure cherry-picking

You could say the same about variant or alpha 5..8 language
registrations, somebody has to do the vetting.  Otherwise all in
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Artistic_languages> could get
subtags.

> it WILL get this draft rejected by IESG.

They didn't approve an unrestricted location registry.  With less
than 26*26*26 the registry is still in reasonable size limits.

With 26*26*26*26 for alpha5..8 (variant or language) it's not,
50 MB would be IMO unacceptable.  I've no idea where the IESG
would draw the line, but at some point Michelle could offer an
opinion on behalf of IANA.

Frank

---

From: Peter Constable <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 13 Oct 2006 06:28:56 -0700

Frank, if you feel that vetting of entities coded in ISO standards is so
essential, why don't you start with 639-1 and 639-2 since those are far
more tractable sets and would be part of vetting 639-3 anyway. (My point
isn't to actually get you to do that but rather to point out you're
being somewhat arbitrary here.)

Personally, I agree with Doug: the job of LTRU is to work on 4646bis,
not to sift through 639-3 and cherry pick. It is *NOT* the role of LTRU
to vet registration requests for variant or 5..8 language subtags; that
the job of ietf-languages.

Peter

-----Original Message-----
From: Frank Ellermann [mailto:[email-masked]]

---

From: John Cowan <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 13 Oct 2006 11:21:08 -0400

> | Yeshiva's pshat in the Gemara.

Before I knew that he had said it in class, I was in agreement with the
head of the (religious) school's interpretation in the Gemara (part of
the Talmud, the Jewish legal code).

> | So get off your tochus and write a letter to Joan Spanne [...]

So get off your buttocks (same implication as in "Sitzfleisch") and
write a letter to J.S. complaining about it.

The point is that these examples are plain English with unusual
vocabulary, not really different from dense slang or the technical
talk of pilots, doctors, or computer programmers.

-- 
When I'm stuck in something boring              John Cowan
where reading would be impossible or            (who loves Asimov too)
rude, I often set up math problems for          [email-masked]
myself and solve them as a way to pass          http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
the time.      --John Jenkins

---

From: Peter Constable <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 13 Oct 2006 10:38:26 -0700

-----Original Message-----
From: John Cowan [mailto:[email-masked]] 

> talk of pilots, doctors, or computer programmers.

Well, that's debatable. When English-speaking doctor uses a term like
"hematoma" they would probably agree that these are English words albeit
part of a specialized domain of vocabulary. (It's common for a language
to have specialized domains of vocabulary that only certain members of
the community learn.) But when a "Yinglish" speaker uses a word like
"pshat", nobody would suggest that that's an English term -- I reject
your suggestion that this is just plain English with specialized English
vocabulary as these are clearly not English and not even borrowings into
English (they are not spoken with English phonology).

At that point, I believe your options (in terms of the categories that
sociolinguists use) are limited to:

- you deem this to be an instance of code switching: moving back and
forth between two languages (I often hear devs that are mother-tongue
speakers of some other language do this, switch to English for certain
technical terms).

- ye deem this to be a distinct language

Peter Constable

---

From: John Cowan <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 13 Oct 2006 14:38:24 -0400

Peter Constable scripsit:

(Taking ltru off the cc list)

> But when a "Yinglish" speaker uses a word like

Don't be deceived by the conventional spelling: the usual pronunciation
is [p@'SAt], and googling shows "peshat" as slightly more common than
"pshat".  Indeed, most of the Slavic and Hebrew Yiddish words with
really un-English phonology have *not* been borrowed into English.

The exception, of course, is the sh+consonant words that are now part,
if a marginal part, of English phonology.  And if I myself say "challah"
(the bread) as ['XAl@], there are plenty of Jews who make it ['hAli],
homonymous with "holly"; similarly ['sUrIs] for "tsuris".

> speakers of some other language do this, switch to English for certain

I think this is an excessively broad definition of code-switching.  See
http://recycledknowledge.blogspot.com/2005/06/french-in-all-its-purity.html
for how pervasive borrowing (of English into French) can get without in
any way being confused with code-switching.

> - ye deem this to be a distinct language

If so, it's one that smoothly integrates into the English dialect
continuum, and exists in isolated clumps in the U.S., Australia,
the U.K., etc., sharing most of the phonological features of
the non-Jewish dialects surrounding each clump.

>From the Wikipedia article on Spanglish:

	More importantly, the many varieties of "Spanglish" developed
	largely independently. In the case of a language like Spanish or
	English, there was a time and place where it originated, spread
	out to many countries and regions, and then diverged from the
	original form. In the case of "Spanglish," there isn't any such
	"original" version of it, from which its "dialects" sprang;
	each form represents a unique instance of English influencing
	the speech of Spanish speakers.

-- 
Business before pleasure, if not too bloomering long before.
        --Nicholas van Rijn
                John Cowan <[email-masked]>
                    http://www.ccil.org/~cowan

---

From: John Cowan <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 13 Oct 2006 18:47:58 -0400

> (Taking ltru off the cc list)

Except I forgot to.  Arrgh.

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

---

From: Frank Ellermann <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 14 Oct 2006 03:00:48 +0200

> So get off your buttocks (same implication as in "Sitzfleisch")
> and write a letter to J.S. complaining about it.

Thanks, for that part I could guess it (de quetschen to en press).
 
> talk of pilots, doctors, or computer programmers.

Assuming that it does not yet qualify for a 639-9 code element it
could still qualify for a 4646 variant.  With a variant it's easy
to find it as "some variant of English".

Frank

---

From: Frank Ellermann <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 14 Oct 2006 03:45:08 +0200

Peter Constable wrote:

> why don't you start with 639-1 and 639-2 since those are far more
> tractable sets and would be part of vetting 639-3 anyway. (My point

Yes, and "tlh" is IMO a border case, I've some doubts about it as a
"language subtag".  But otherwise it's something real, not only the
movies and the books, folks take it as some kind of ethics or religion.

For slightly different reasons "sjn" is also okay from my POV.  About
25 years ago I collected a word list - the German translation didn't
offer this.  For "jbo" I trust that John knows why it's okay, I had
no reason to check it.

But that "orq" case triggered all my "Wikipedia list of micronations"
alarm bells at once.  There are folks out there who try to smuggle in
nonsense, and some not for fun but for dubious purposes, also known as
"search engine optimization" or "spam".

Some "micronations" are obscure pyramid schemes or worse.  And I trust
that "Sea Island" in "gul" is unrelated to "Sealand".  As micronation
Sealand is mostly harmless, but there's a lot of fine print, "mostly"
does not mean "completely", gullible folks lost some real money.

> the job of LTRU is to work on 4646bis, not to sift through 639-3 and
> cherry pick. It is *NOT* the role of LTRU

> to vet registration requests for variant or 5..8 language subtags;
> that the job of ietf-languages.

Sure, but LTRU could decree that 639-3 type "C" is only registered on
demand after approval by the subtag list.  Probably that's pointless
if there's no way to get rid of it in 639-3 later, the alpha3 code is
then "lost" (occupied forever) anyway, not copying it to the registry
doesn't help.

A more effective procedure could be that the subtag review list gets
a copy of all proposals for new code elements - maybe that boils down
to "subscribe some newsletter to the subtag review list".

Frank

---

From: John Cowan <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 13 Oct 2006 22:10:47 -0400

Frank Ellermann scripsit:

> offer this.  

A detailed grammar has been published, as well as vocabulary lists of
various sizes.

> And I trust
> that "Sea Island" in "gul" is unrelated to "Sealand".  

It is.  The Sea Islands in question are off the eastern coast of
South Carolina, U.S.

> then "lost" (occupied forever) anyway, not copying it to the registry

Just so.

-- 
It was impossible to inveigle           John Cowan <[email-masked]>
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel           http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
Into offering the slightest apology
For his Phenomenology.                      --W. H. Auden, from "People" (1953)