From: Doug Ewell (dewell@adelphia.net)
Date: Wed Dec 27 2006 - 09:33:51 CST
Sorry, I need to make one correction.
I wrote in response to Philippe Verdy:
>> So for me, according to RFC4646, the "zh-min" full language tag still
>> means something different from the possible "min" full language tag
>> (that may eventually be built using the "min" language code
>> standardized later in ISO 639, provided that it is registered in the
>> language tag registry).
>
> It cannot, because extlangs are derived from ISO 639 code elements
> just as primary language subtags are.
I misread Philippe's original sentence. The "zh-min" tag does indeed
mean something different from "min" -- not just in the future, but right
now, since "min" is an ISO 639-2 code element and therefore a primary
language subtag.
"min" refers to the language Minangkabau, which according to Ethnologue
is spoken in Indonesia (not the Philippines as often stated).
"zh-min" was originally registered under RFC 1766 in 1999 with the
meaning "Min, Fuzhou, Hokkien, Amoy, or Taiwanese." "Min" is not a
single language, but a classification of Chinese languages that includes
Min Nan, Min Dong, Min Bei, and others. Apparently the original
"zh-min" tag was either perceived to be too broad in scope, or
deliberately intended to serve as the base for future "zh-min-???" tags,
although such a base was not required by RFC 1766 or 3066. In any case,
"zh-min-nan" was registered in 2001.
These two do indeed have different meanings. However, this says nothing
about the nature of primary vs. extended language subtags, because the
"min" in "zh-min" is not an extlang -- it is just a substring of an
indivisible grandfathered tag. We know this because "zh-min" is on the
list of grandfathered tags.
The same goes for "zh-min-nan" and all the other grandfathered tags:
they are not intended to be broken into subtags and analyzed, even if
doing so would result in a syntactically well-formed RFC 4646 tag.
The intent of RFC 1766 was for registered tags to be considered atomic.
Only tags generated from a combination of ISO 639 and 3166 code
elements, such as "fr-CH", could be considered as the sum of their
parts. RFC 4646 regularizes this, but also permits the use of valid RFC
1766/3066 tags like "zh-min" that predate RFC 4646.
I hope this helps. I apologize again for the earlier misreading.
Further discussion of RFC 4646 and 4646bis really does belong on the
LTRU mailing list.
-- Doug Ewell * Fullerton, California, USA * RFC 4645 * UTN #14 http://users.adelphia.net/~dewell/ http://www1.ietf.org/html.charters/ltru-charter.html http://www.alvestrand.no/mailman/listinfo/ietf-languages
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