Subject: [Ltru] Ethnologue and ISO 639-3

From: "Doug Ewell" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 27 May 2008 20:53:01 -0600

Debbie Garside <debbie at ictmarketing dot co dot uk> wrote:

> Please remember that Ethnologue is not normative in any way.  If you 
> want information about ISO 639-3 go to the ISO 639-3 site. From there 
> you can access the linked informative data from Ethnologue whilst at 
> the same time being assured that the code you are viewing is up to 
> date.

That's the approach I took in my tag-creating and tag-parsing software, 
which is on semi-permanent hold during this period of chaos.  For every 
language subtag in the Registry, there is a "More information..." Web 
link to the ISO 639-3 page, which in turn may contain a link to the 
relevant Ethnologue or Linguist List page.  Note that the link does 
*not* say "Definitive, undisputable, last-word information."

This strategy even works for ISO 639-2 collection codes, since the 639-3 
site includes vestigial pages for each of them.  The only special 
handling necessary is to map 2-letter language subtags back to their 
3-letter equivalents.  Naturally, this strategy fails if the Registry 
has a 639-3-based subtag that isn't in Ethnologue or Linguist List, but 
then again the phrase "More information..." isn't intended to promise 
the moon.

--
Doug Ewell  *  Arvada, 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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