[Wikipedia-l] SIL Ethnologue vs. ISO codes for determination of language inclusion

[Jay Bowks]

From: "Tim Starling"
> SIL seems to have little time for constructed languages, listing only
> three. ISO 639-2, on the other hand, has a policy allowing any language
> with more than 50 documents to obtain a code. Hence, Klingon is included
> in ISO's short list, but not in SIL's much longer one.
>
> My proposal is to automatically allow any language considered one of
> SIL's main languages, and to only seek community approval when it is not
> listed. I think we should largely ignore the ISO list.

Hi Tim,
The SIL ethnologue list is quite flawed.
In this respect the ISO codes are more
dependable...

The Ethnologue lists
http://www.ethnologue.com/show_family.asp?subid=827
Esperanto, Europanto, and Interlingua.
It further mentions that Interlingua is
a language of France...
http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=INR
It also claims that Esperanto is a language
of France, and that it has "200 to 2,000 people who
speak it as first language". If so it would be a
natural and non-artificial language for them
wouldn't it, those French native speakers of
Esperanto.... Highly irregular!

The list is flawed, and the fact that they include
"Europanto" is quite a joke, no kidding,
Europanto was a joke language developed
by translators within the EU and only for
amusement. To exclude Volapük which
had at one time hundreds of thousands
of learners and users and still has a small
community of active users is just wrong
if one is going to include "Europanto"
which no one really uses as a community
except joking translators within the
EU Brussels, European Union buildings...
as Ethnologue points out.

The Ethnologue list is definitely flawed and
worse as a resource in this respect than the
use of ISO codes.

With regards,
Jay B.