Subject: Re: [Ietf-languages] A code for standard Zhuang

From: "Doug Ewell" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 03 Apr 2018 15:46:53 -0700

David Starner wrote:

>> Yes, I’m also wondering whether using just [za] wouldn’t be both more
>> sensible and better serve the community.  That’s what most other
>> Wikipedias do, after all: [zh] for Chinese, not [cmn]; [ar] for
>> Arabic, not [arb], [pt] for Portuguese, not [pt-br] and [pt-pt], etc.
>
> Probably. However, that still leaves the question of what the ISO
> 639-3 code (which, again, the Wikipedia page for Standard Zhuang gives
> as mis) should be used, even if that's not needed for Wikimedia (and a
> theoretical and currently unimportant question of whether za.WP and
> zyb.WP can coexist.)

Practically anything is better than "mis", practically all the time.

Apparently someone read "Choice of Language Tag," item 5:

"The 'mis' (Uncoded) primary language subtag identifies content whose
language is known but that does not currently have a corresponding
subtag."

and decided, since there was no language subtag explicitly called
"Standard Zhuang," that no other ISO 639-3 code element would do, not
the macrolanguage code element [zha] for "Zhuang" nor any of the 16
specific Zhuangs.

That's almost like some WP contributor is trying to make a point. It's
sort of like the page for Auvergnat, which spends some time discussing
the relationship between Auvergnat and Occitan (idiom? dialect? separate
language?) but shows – for the 639-3 code element instead of the
overall code element [oci] for Occitan, which would be much more
accurate and helpful.
 
--
Doug Ewell | Thornton, CO, US | ewellic.org

---

From: Arthur Reutenauer <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 4 Apr 2018 16:03:47 +0200

On Tue, Apr 03, 2018 at 03:46:53PM -0700, Doug Ewell wrote:
> [cut]
> That's almost like some WP contributor is trying to make a point.

  Actually, the Wikipedia infobox has “None (mis)”, which is probably
worse than everything.

	Best,

		Arthur