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.