Subject: Re: [Ltru] WG Last Call for draft-ietf-ltru-4645bis-06.txt

From: "Doug Ewell" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 10 Oct 2008 07:10:12 -0600

Stéphane Bortzmeyer <bortzmeyer at nic dot fr> wrote:

> A few editorial details:
>
> * "inverted", used several times, does not seem to be formally defined 
> somewhere

I did include an example at the end of this paragraph (second bullet 
point of Section 2.1):

"For example, this file contained an entry for the code element ‘prs’ 
with the name “Dari” (twice) and another entry with the names 'Eastern 
Farsi' and 'Farsi, Eastern'."

Would it be better to annotate these examples or actually provide a 
formal definition?  For the former, I might suggest:

"... and another entry with the non-inverted name 'Eastern Farsi' and 
the corresponding inverted name 'Farsi, Eastern'."

For the latter, a new sentence like this might be inserted after the 
sentence ending with "appropriate":

"An 'inverted' name is one which is altered from the usual 
English-language order by moving adjectival qualifiers to the front, 
before the main language name, and separated by a comma."

Let me know which alternative (possibly edited) might be better.

> * I'm a bit concerned that the rationale for the list of 
> macrolanguages in 2.2 is not exposed. If you want to know why Akan is 
> treated differently from Uzbek, you have to dig into the LTRU 
> archives.

This is expressed in the second sentence of the second paragraph, right 
after the list:

"These macrolanguage subtags were already present in the Language Subtag 
Registry and were determined by the LTRU Working Group to have been used 
to represent a single dominant language as well as the macrolanguage as 
a whole, making the extended language mechanism suitable for languages 
encompassed by the macrolanguage."

Should this sentence be more explicit in stating the reason for singling 
out these languages?  Maybe something like this:

"... and were chosen because they were determined by the LTRU Working 
Group to have been used..."

--
Doug Ewell  *  Thornton, Colorado, USA  *  RFC 4645  *  UTN #14
http://www.ewellic.org
http://www1.ietf.org/html.charters/ltru-charter.html
http://www.alvestrand.no/mailman/listinfo/ietf-languages  ˆ

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---

From: Stephane Bortzmeyer <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 10 Oct 2008 15:31:04 +0200

On Fri, Oct 10, 2008 at 07:10:12AM -0600,
 Doug Ewell <[email-masked]> wrote 

> before the main language name, and separated by a comma."

I prefer a formal definition like this one. It is specially useful
since I always thought that "Farsi, Eastern", with the qualifier at
the end, was the inverted form.

---

From: Stephane Bortzmeyer <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 10 Oct 2008 16:52:48 +0200

On Fri, Oct 10, 2008 at 03:31:04PM +0200,
 Stephane Bortzmeyer <[email-masked]> wrote 

> the end, was the inverted form.

After discussion with Doug, it is now clear that there was a little
bug in the definition ("front" instead of "end").

So, "Farsi, Eastern" *is* the inverted form and "Eastern Farsi" the
non-inverted.
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From: Peter Constable <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 10 Oct 2008 08:52:45 -0700

Isn't "Farsi, Eastern" the inverted form? The usual English-language order would be "Eastern Farsi". Surely Doug must have meant "moving adjectival qualifiers to the end, after the main language name, and separated by a comma."

Peter

---

From: "Doug Ewell" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 10 Oct 2008 18:15:24 -0600

Peter Constable <petercon at microsoft dot com> wrote:

> Isn't "Farsi, Eastern" the inverted form? The usual English-language 
> order would be "Eastern Farsi".

Yes, I wrote that with an inverted brain.  Sorry, everyone.

> Surely Doug must have meant "moving adjectival qualifiers to the end, 
> after the main language name, and separated by a comma."

That is the wording I am sticking with, unless there is a compelling 
reason to change it.

---

From: "Doug Ewell" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 21 Oct 2008 07:10:37 -0600

Kent Karlsson <kent dot karlsson14 at comhem dot se> wrote off-list:

> I haven't kept up with all the details here, but should not
>
> Description: Creoles and pidgins, Portuguese-based
>
> instead be
>
> Description: Portuguese-based creoles and pidgins
>
> ? And similarly for a few other language and region Descriptions.
>
> Was there some kind of exception to the "use non-inverted rather than 
> inverted" rule (or sort-of-rule for for the registry update) for 
> Descriptions?

There is no exception; this is simply my mistake.  Since ISO 639-3 
separates the inverted and non-inverted names, making it easy for me to 
add only the inverted names to the 4645bis Registry, I neglected to do 
the manual un-inversion on the non-639-3 names.

Thanks to Kent for catching this.

---

From: "Kent Karlsson" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 21 Oct 2008 20:48:36 +0200

I found the following Descriptions with comma:

Inversions (should be uninverted):

Description: Creoles and pidgins, English-based
Description: Creoles and pidgins, French-based
Description: Creoles and pidgins, Portuguese-based
Description: Congo, The Democratic Republic of the
Description: Micronesia, Federated States of
Description: Iran, Islamic Republic of
Description: Korea, Democratic People's Republic of
Description: Korea, Republic of
Description: Macedonia, The Former Yugoslav Republic of
Description: Palestinian Territory, Occupied
Description: Tanzania, United Republic of
Description: Virgin Islands, British
Description: Virgin Islands, U.S.
Description: Yemen, Democratic

(At least two of those could use a shorter, more commonly used, name...)

Unclear (maybe just remove the comma, or uninvert both):

Description: Cuneiform, Sumero-Akkadian <--- but compare   Description: Cuneiform Luwian 

The following are not inversions:

Description: Old Italic (Etruscan, Oscan, etc.)
Description: Ceuta, Melilla	<--- these are two autonomous cities that for some reason share the EA region code
Description: Taiwan, Province of China
Description: English, Oxford English Dictionary spelling
Description: Min, Fuzhou, Hokkien, Amoy, or Taiwanese
Description: Minnan, Hokkien, Amoy, Taiwanese, Southern Min, Southern
  Fujian, Hoklo, Southern Fukien, Ho-lo
Description: German, traditional orthography
Description: German, orthography of 1996
Description: German, Austrian variant, traditional orthography
Description: German, Austrian variant, orthography of 1996
Description: German, Swiss variant, traditional orthography
Description: German, Swiss variant, orthography of 1996
Description: German, German variant, traditional orthography
Description: German, German variant, orthography of 1996
Description: Natisone dialect, Nadiza dialect
Description: Resian, Resianic, Rezijan
Description: Yiddish, in Latin script

		/kent k

> From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On 
> Behalf Of Doug Ewell
> Sent: Tuesday, October 21, 2008 3:11 PM
> To: LTRU Working Group

---

From: "Doug Ewell" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 21 Oct 2008 22:06:24 -0600

> Inversions (should be uninverted):

I independently came up with the same list as Kent, and (unsurprisingly) 
agree with it.

> (At least two of those could use a shorter, more commonly used, 

That's not my role as editor of 4645bis.  Someone can always go to 
ietf-languages and request registration of, say, just plain "Iran" or 
just plain "Tanzania."

> Description: Cuneiform Luwian

The first is a script; the second is a language.  I can't make any 
assumption as to whether the usage of "Cuneiform" is parallel in these 
two names.  I think it would be maximally consistent to uninvert 
"Cuneiform, Sumero-Akkadian" and leave "Cuneiform Luwian" alone.

> The following are not inversions:

I agree, and believe that the uninverting exercise should not extend to 
the descriptions of variant subtags and grandfathered and redundant 
tags, which were requested and registered on ietf-languages and did not 
come from external standards.

---

From: John Cowan <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 22 Oct 2008 00:15:05 -0400

> "Cuneiform, Sumero-Akkadian" and leave "Cuneiform Luwian" alone.

That's the Right Thing.  The former is the style of cuneiform characters
used to write Sumerian and Akkadian; the latter is the type of Luwian
written with cuneiform characters.

-- 
John Cowan   [email-masked]  http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
Most languages are dramatically underdescribed, and at least one is
dramatically overdescribed.  Still other languages are simultaneously
overdescribed and underdescribed.  Welsh pertains to the third category.
        --Alan King
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