Andre Engels wrote:
I have before proposed to go with ISO 639-2. Main rule
for ISO 639-2 is
that there should be 50 different documents divided over at most 50
places. I would not put it as a hard rule, but I'd say that for languages
outside ISO 639-2, the onus is with the person wanting to add it to give
reasons, while for languages within, the onus is with those who want to
refrain from adding it.
Klingon is everybody's favorite example of "we shouldn't have this", but
it's got an ISO 639-2 code: tlh, officially added earlier this year.
http://www.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/codechanges.html
Aside from the "it would be embarrassing" factor which seems to be the
main driver in anti-Klingon sentiment, the copyright status of
Klingon-language materials is somewhat unclear, as Paramount apparently
claims them as derivative works. (IANAL! Feist v. Rural may not apply as
creating a language is pretty clearly a creative work, and the
Lojban/Loglan case doesn't apply since that was over the trademark to
the name 'loglan' -- the lojban folks preemptively changed the entire
vocabulary to avoid potential copyright claims.)
-- brion vibber (brion @
pobox.com)