Dialects any one ?

When there is a need for new languages in WiktionaryZ, the current procedure is that one of the bureaucrats can and do enable languages for editing content. So far we have added languages and had special considerations for scripts and locales. Scripts are "easy" as we have in the ISO-15924 a list of what are considered scripts, examples of their use is in how we deal with for instance Hausa, Mandarin or Serbian. Locales are more problematic, but so far we have restricted ourselves to using country codes. Country codes are easy too they can be found in the ISO 3166.

Now what to do with dialects. Let me be really practical; I have received a request for several languages by Mark Williamson. His request seems reasonable to me; he indicates clearly what he wants, the languages with their dialects and their scripts. When I try to do some research I find nothing that makes his request unreasonable, it is just that I cannot really judge it.

The biggest stumbling block however is, how to name these dialects as a code. It is one thing to insist on standards but another to find that there is no apparent standard for these dialects. I have been looking around and I subscribed to a few mailinglists to do with linguistics, and I hope that this will get me an answer.

With WiktionaryZ still in "pre-alpha" mode, I have an excellent excuse not to rush into the creation of these languages, but I think it is also fair to let it be known what the issue is. It is a practical one, it is not that we do not want dialects to be part of WiktionaryZ.

Thanks,
GerardM

WiktionaryZ and RFC 4646

The RFC 4646 provides many things that I will gladly follow particularly in the way it allows for extentions. I have discussed the issues that I have with Felix Sasaki (W3C) and Gerhard Budin (ISO) among others.

• Many recognized languages have to "fit" as a subtag of another language. This is for many people who think "politically" about languages not acceptable. The way it is implemented is also a travesty for people who know about languages. The motivation is to provide backwards compatibility even though ISO-639-2 was dismissed as useless and ISO-639-3 had to be created really quickly.
  
• Some of the things not standardized yet in the ISO codes are worked on as new standards (eg dialects) the proposed codes are not known at this time and this creates a mess of its own.
• Orthographies are not supported in the planned for extentions to ISO-639. This is acknowledged as an omission.

Consequently, it is much better to make a clean break while still conforming to standards. The standards complicance existing in WiktionaryZ is better than the standards compliance of the current crop of Wikimedia language codes. They do not conform to a standard because it breaks standards in many places. Some of the language codes used are voted in with a total disregard of what would be valid vis a vis the terms of usage of the ISO-639 codes.

Let me repeat that WiktionaryZ does include a code for Wikimedia language codes; it makes sense to have backwards compatibility. The basis for inclusion at WiktionaryZ for languages at this time are the ISO-639-3 codes. When need be the ISO-639-3 codes are extended using RFC 4646 to provide guidelines on how to do this and we will and do ask people in standards organizations on how to solve issues that are outside what RFC 4646 provides answers for.

We do have a code currently indicated as "ISO-639-2" in our database. We could enter something there that would be compatible with the RFC 4646 once it is figured out what would be a valid code under this regime. Problematic is that many of the ISO-639-2 codes are depreciated in ISO-639-3 and, it would be a nice academic exercise to create these codes where I do not want to deal with the political fall out that this creates.

Thanks,
GerardM