>>> Recently we have requested the ISO 639-2 RA to add a single
3-letter code >> for Sign Languages (deaf and otherwise). This
single code can be combined >> with ISO 3166-1 country codes
and ISO 3166-2 subdivision codes usefully.
>
>>And it unnecessarily distinguish same Sign Languages in
different countries.
>It does _not_. Sorry, but you are dead wrong. Sign Languages
_are_ different in different countries; and some countries have
more than one.
And the fact that some countries have more than one suggests to
me that combining a single 3-letter code for Sign Languages
with a country code ismisguided.
We all know that languages generally correlate very little with
national boundaries. Admitedly, there are many cases where
there a clear tendencies, but it doesn't take much to discover
that those tendencies are very limited. Ultimately, if you want
to distinguish languages, then you need a system of language
tags that supports thousands of distinctions - 3 letter (26 ^
3) is sufficient - and not a muddled combination of language
IDs and country IDs. (That combination should give a *locale*
ID, which has valid uses, but has limited usefulness for
distinguishing languages.)
Peter
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Tue Jul 10 2001 - 17:20:56 EDT