Re: lowercased Unicode language tags ? (was:ISO 15924)

From: John Cowan (cowan@ccil.org)
Date: Sun May 02 2004 - 21:36:41 CDT


Philippe Verdy scripsit:

> Not really: Many ISO 3166-3 codes (for former countries or territories
> or those that have changed their code) are also 4 letters.
>
> For example ZRCD designates the former Zaïre (now Dem. Rep. of Congo),
> DDDE the former Dem. Rep. of Germany (now unified with Germany),
> BUMM is the former Kingdom of Burma (now.Myanmar).

Well, those codes really code transitions, not countries: they are
structurally a pair of 2-letter 3166-1 codes, saying that what was
once ZR is now CD, what was once DD is now (part of) DE, and what
was once BU is now MM.

> And there are also ISO 3166-2 codes for administrative regions in
> countries (such as FR2B for the department of Haute-Corse in France).

I think those are usually written FR-2B, though I do not have access
to 3166-2 itself.

> Languages need not only distinctions by countries but also by regions
> in countries, if this is needed. So Catalan in the Spanish Canaries
> would use the ISO3166 code "ESCI" after the language tag "es" (the
> complete code would be "es-Latn-ESCI" or just "es-ESCI", distinct from
> "es-Latn" which could be used also for Castillan.

Catalan is not Spanish, and has its own code. RFC 3066 permits registration
of sub-country codes if needed, but they must be registered explicitly
to be used. The proposed replacement, RFC 3066bis, does not yet
allow sub-country codes.

> Lettercase can make a difference here to differentiate a script and
> a region code. Suppose that there's a ISO3166-2 code "LATN" (a region
> code "TN" in Lao?), how will you interpret "lo-LATN"?

It's not preregistered, so it can only be interpreted by looking at the
RFC 3066 registration list, which does not have it.

-- 
Here lies the Christian,                        John Cowan
judge, and poet Peter,                  http://www.reutershealth.com
Who broke the laws of God                       http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
and man and metre.                      jcowan@reutershealth.com


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