Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi,Purodha what you say about Ethnologue is very biases, wrong and often hardly relevant.
I am sorry if my contribution was biased. My main goal was to warn that there are more than 7000-odd languages, extending ISO 639-3 is time consuming, and that we have the BCP47 defining language variants in addition to ISO 639.
When you know your history, Ethnologue was asked if they would bring in their expertise and system in the ISO processes because the existing ISO-639-2 was extremely inadequate. When it was included, it became part of an established process whereby experts from national standard bodies decide on the further development. Effectively the role of Ethnologue is one of administrator, not initiator.
Thrue.
Saying that all the issues about languages is because to Ethnlogue is completely false.
I was not meaning to say that.
The notion if there are many more languages is very much open to debate. There is no good answer.
Sure, it depends. Also, I do not want to put blame on anyone. Naturally, whatever you collect, you start somewhere, it will take time, and at some point you have an incomplete, but growing list. That is how I see Ethnologue. I keep mailing them data knowing that they are going to need their time to verify and process it.
Taking into account what we likely have to use as a definition for "language" is, whether or not labels, lexemes, or similar, are spelled pronunced, signalled, or syntactically/grammatically put together differently enough to warrant that we call them distinct from another "language". I am well aware that this is a foggy thing and there are many instances that can cause controversies.
When you are interested in looking beyond the ISO-639-3 consider the ISO-639-6. It aims to include any and all language variants and it is not that interested in using the political term what language has become.
I was considering to mention it in my post. I did not, mainly for bevity.
Yet also, I doubt, it's in a useful state already. Last fall or late summer, it had almost twice as many entries as ISO 639-3, language coverage in my main field was as incomplete as ISO 639, it was not publicized in a well usable way (Website down since long. Before that, queryable in a complicated and inefficient manner for individual entries and small sets only. No listings available online. No details beyond language names. Good news: the web site is partly online again as of today.)
Yes, I do consider ISO 639-6. I am happy about it's clearer and simpler approach to the subject matter, and I am looking forward to using it, as its coverage grows.
Purodha