Hoi!
As a matter of fact, LangCom does not accept "governments" as regulation
sources, not until ISO does it first. The only regulatory source we have is
ISO.
This is a protection against all possible political pressure, to which
linguistics are always exposed. We don't say that ISO is infallible, we
simply say that a larger opinion (i.e., international) is less likely to be
biased in favor of somebody's interests. So no government "opinion" (even
in
form of a law) can be accepted.
If the Italian Government believes that their policy can gather
international acceptance by the linguists' community, they are welcome to
issue a request for they "opinion" to become a recognized international
standard. ISO will issue a code for their new creature, and they can use it
in a wiki (but NOT as SC, unless ISO says so). Until then, "Limba Sarda
Comune" simply does not exist, as far as LangCom is concerned, because we do
not issue any recognition ourselves.
The fact that it.wiki could be requested to accept romanesco, by following
the same logics, is an exaggeration. The IT code is clearly identified with
"italian standard", while the SC code has nothing to do with "Limba Sarda
Comune". It's self evident, since one is classified as a macro-language, the
other acts as a single entity that is not classified ANYWHERE.
We DO NOT make rules here, we simply apply them. Tomorrow somebody in
Brussels will create a normative "United Romance Language" in order to cut
translation expenses, and we will react just in the same way. No wiki until
a competent international organ does not assign a code to it.
Having said so, if it.wiki was to accept content in Romanesco, they would
help in preserving a very important part of the Italian culture, which I
personally would applaud. But nobody can ask them to do so, because they are
publishing exactly what they declare to publish (content in ITA). What must
be stopped is an illegal redefinition of an international ISO code. That
much is "policy". Romanesco has all my sympathy, but no official
recognition, and my own opinions are but opinions, not a policy.
We stopped BE-x-old from occupying a code; we cannot be nicer to Italians
when they have the same faults. When there is a policy it applies to
everyone. We have an Italian citizen in LangCom, another in the Board, plus
a German citizen resident in Italy who is chairing LangCom. The situation
would be fairly easy to interpret as a "mafia creep" by the rest of the
planet. Well, no favors to relatives here, rules are rules for everybody, no
matter where they are from.
Hope it's clearer now.
Bèrto d Sèra
Personagi dlann 2006 për larvista american-a Time (tanme tuti vojàotri)
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html