Subject: Re: [Ltru] Lowercase language names and the Registry

From: "Debbie Garside" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 2 Feb 2009 10:10:24 -0000

Addison wrote:

>> So… to be clear, I favor putting *exactly* what ISO 639 has into the
initial registry unless it conflicts with a specific provision of 4646bis

+1

Debbie

   _____  

From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of
Phillips, Addison
Sent: 30 January 2009 18:15
To: Gerard Meijssen; CE Whitehead
Cc: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: [Ltru] Lowercase language names and the Registry

The RFC says quite clearly that the ‘Description’ fields in the registry
exist only to provide for unambiguous identification of subtag meaning. They
should not be taken to be the localized name or in any particular language.
Mainly the registry mirrors whatever one of the ISO groups has put into
their standards. 4646bis allows for some cleanup/editing by the LSR in cases
where the name has some sort of formatting problem (hence Doug’s inquiry).
This is different from the goals of CLDR. People can and should rely on CLDR
to be correct in presentation. But we have already warned users NOT to rely
on the description fields in the registry.

Note that the registration process exists to allow users of the registry to
correct or add additional descriptive material. My tendency is to favor
mirroring exactly what ISO 639 has in the “initial” registry. If someone
feels strongly about it, they can petition ietf-languages@ to change it.
That’s what the process is for and I would tend to support corrections that
native language speakers feel strongly about.

So… to be clear, I favor putting *exactly* what ISO 639 has into the initial
registry unless it conflicts with a specific provision of 4646bis.

Addison Phillips

Globalization Architect -- Lab126

Internationalization is not a feature.

It is an architecture.

From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of
Gerard Meijssen
Sent: Friday, January 30, 2009 10:07 AM
To: CE Whitehead
Cc: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: [Ltru] Lowercase language names and the Registry

Hoi,
If the list is ony to be used as a list with a local application, I agree.
When people want to use lists like this or the CLDR language list, they
depend on the information to be right. It is not and people do.
Thanks,
       Gerard

2009/1/30 CE Whitehead <HYPERLINK
"mailto:[email-masked]"[email-masked]>

Hi.  I think Leif and Doug get my vote here.

In a list I'd feel comfortable 'title-casing' the first word in French (a
language in which language names are also normally 'lower-cased').
But I'm not a native speaker.  
 
(NOTE:  I found different conventions regarding titles online:
HYPERLINK
"http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=histoire+du+francais&btnG=Search"
\nhttp://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=histoire+du+francais&btnG=Search 
HYPERLINK "http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=francais&btnG=Search"
\nhttp://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=francais&btnG=Search [these are not
lists however, just titles].
when a French title appears on a book in the U.S. market, every word on the
book may be title-cased:
HYPERLINK
"http://shopping.msn.com/prices/allons-y-le-francais-par-etapes-with-audio-c
d/itemid25043275/?itemtext=itemname:allons-y-le-francais-par-etapes-with-aud
io-cd"
\nhttp://shopping.msn.com/prices/allons-y-le-francais-par-etapes-with-audio-
cd/itemid25043275/?itemtext=itemname:allons-y-le-francais-par-etapes-with-au
dio-cd 
Wikipedia has two conventions for lists in French it seems?:
HYPERLINK
"http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_de_langues_par_ordre_alphab%C3%A9tique"
\nhttp://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_de_langues_par_ordre_alphab%C3%A9tique
HYPERLINK "http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_des_langues_officielles"
\nhttp://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_des_langues_officielles
 
in one the first word, whether the language name or a definite article
preceding the name, is 'upper cased'; in the other list the names are almost
all 'lower cased')

Thanks.
 
--C. E. Whitehead
HYPERLINK "mailto:[email-masked]" \[email-masked] 

 

From: Leif Halvard Silli <HYPERLINK "mailto:[email-masked]" \nlhs at
malform.no> 
To: Doug Ewell <HYPERLINK "mailto:[email-masked]" \ndoug at ewellic.org>

Doug Ewell 2009-01-30 07.08:

So far so good, but then the January 26 revision came along and lowercased
the Finnish and Swedish names, as the requestor originally suggested (see
HYPERLINK "http://www.sil.org/iso639-3/cr_files/2008-028.pdf"
\nhttp://www.sil.org/iso639-3/cr_files/2008-028.pdf): 

   Finland-Swedish Sign Language
   finlandssvenskt teckenspråk
   suomenruotsalainen viittomakieli

   [...]

I propose that for draft-4645bis and the Language Subtag Registry generally,
we introduce a rule that Description fields for language subtags be modified
from the ISO-provided name if necessary to ensure they begin with a capital
letter, unless the lowercase letter is considered necessary to spell the
name correctly (as it is in "tlhIngan-Hol"). This is consistent with
draft-4646bis, Section 3.1.5, which allows Description fields to be "edited
or modified" from the ISO rendering. 

Unless someone objects on-list to this rather pedantic suggestion, it will
be added to the next draft-4645bis. 

In my view it is defendable to let language names begin with upper-case
letter even in Scandinavian languages, as long as the names appears in a
list -aka "menu" - as opposed to in a comma separated line of words. Hence,
I'm ok with it. 

--
leif halvard silli

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