Subject: [Ltru] Re: extlang

From: "Doug Ewell" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2007 12:30:53 -0700

Don Osborn <dzo at bisharat dot net> wrote:

>> Yes, hence language tags such as "es-419" [Latin American Spanish, 
>> essentially]. This is a somewhat artificial distinction useful in 
>> certain contexts. But most language tags have some basis actual 
>> language distinctions.
>
> Thanks for reminding me of this (I believe John mentioned it a while 
> back). It might be an approach useful for a number of African 
> languages (Swahili and Hausa for starters, although each have 
> country-level locales already) and probably for such as African French 
> or English.

I brought this up once; John may have also.

Here are the numeric region subtags that refer to Africa:

002    Africa
011    Western Africa
014    Eastern Africa
015    Northern Africa
017    Middle Africa
018    Southern Africa

As a reminder, these are defined by the UN Statistics Division, not by 
ietf-languages.

--
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: John Cowan <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2007 15:46:53 -0400

> 018    Southern Africa

A precise definition of these subtags in terms of included countries
can be found at http://unstats.un.org/unsd/methods/m49/m49regin.htm#africa .

-- 
John Cowan <[email-masked]>             http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
It's like if you meet an really old, really rich guy covered in liver
spots and breathing with an oxygen tank, and you say, "I want to be
rich, too, so I'm going to start walking with a cane and I'm going to
act crotchety and I'm going to get liver disease. --Wil Shipley

---

From: "Don Osborn" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2007 16:45:55 -0400

Thanks Doug. Sorry you may have noted this too (forget with so many details).

So the Africa numerical region subtags have not been defined/adopted by IETF-languages, but the Latin America numerical tag "419" has? (Hence es-419?) Not that I'm planning on it, but if there were a need for a tag for say East African Swahili or for African French, one would need to make the proposal to IETF-languages?

Just clarifying. TIA..

Don

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Doug Ewell [mailto:[email-masked]]
> Sent: Tuesday, March 20, 2007 3:31 PM
> To: LTRU Working Group
> Cc: [email-masked]
> Subject: Re: extlang
>

---

From: Addison Phillips <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2007 20:49:38 -0700

No, that's not correct.

The UN M.49 codes (the numeric subtags) are allowed in language tags. 
The code "419" is one of these. What Doug is saying is: the codes and 
what they mean are defined by the UN, not by separate registration on 
the ietf-languages list. Just like the ISO 639-1 codes are defined by 
ISO 639, not by separate registration.

Addison

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

Internationalization is an architecture.
It is not a feature.

---

From: "Doug Ewell" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2007 23:02:43 -0700

Don Osborn <dzo at bisharat dot net> wrote:

> So the Africa numerical region subtags have not been defined/adopted 
> by IETF-languages, but the Latin America numerical tag "419" has? 
> (Hence es-419?) Not that I'm planning on it, but if there were a need 
> for a tag for say East African Swahili or for African French, one 
> would need to make the proposal to IETF-languages?

Addison replied:

> What Doug is saying is: the codes and what they mean are defined by 
> the UN, not by separate registration on the ietf-languages list.

I think there are two sources of misunderstanding here; that's one of 
them.  The other stems from the presence of the tag "es-419" in the 
Registry.  It was registered in the late RFC 3066 era when we knew the 
numeric region subtags were going to be available shortly.  We had 
previously argued over a tag for "Latin American Spanish" and it became 
clear that we could register "es-419" almost for free -- it would meet 
the immediate need without adding another grandfathered tag (or variant 
subtag) to the mix.

The ietf-languages group no longer registers whole tags, but rather 
subtags.  At the same time, all of the UN numeric code elements that 
represent macro-geographical areas -- all of them -- are available using 
the generative model.  So the presence of the redundant tag "es-419" in 
the Registry is a historical curiosity only; it is no more or less 
legitimate than "sw-014" or "fr-002", the two tags Don asked about.  You 
can use those tags today if you like.

My list of six numeric subtags dealing with Africa was copied from the 
Registry, not from the UN list.

There are a few UN M.49 code elements that have not been carried over as 
region subtags, the ones that represent economic groupings.  An example 
is 199, "Least developed countries."  This group includes countries as 
diverse (geographically and linguistically) as Cape Verde, Bangladesh, 
and Vanuatu; such groupings would be pointless in language tags.  (By 
comparison, Don has shown clearly what others have disputed, that there 
is a demand for macro-geographical subtags and that they can have 
meaning.)

---

From: "Don Osborn" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 21 Mar 2007 07:53:33 -0400

Doug, Addison, Thanks for the clarifications. I wasn't clear how outside codes are taken in by ietf-languages, but since the set of regional codes is already in the registry that's great. Don

> Sent: Wednesday, March 21, 2007 2:03 AM
> To: LTRU Working Group
> Cc: Don Osborn
> Subject: Re: Numerical region subtags (RE: extlang)
>