Gerard Lang's info. is good info. (I quote from his older posting here but I've seen both).
Gerard's info. does not make me turn one way or the other however--so I agree with Doug on this point.
I see that:
(1), if [sh] is 'un-retired' (or whatever) we have two macro-language codes for Serbian, Croatian, and Bosnian.
(2), If it is not 'un-retired' we have one code and one deprecated code.
(Forgive me for making up the word 'un-retired.')
Indeed I do not see that it matters what we do here. (Are we just doing this to do something in this case?)
--C. E. Whitehead
cewcathar <at> hotmail.com Lang Gérard
gerard.lang at insee.fr Tue Jun 30 17:31:03 CEST 2009
> I completely agree with this position.
In fact, the situation concerning sh and connex code elements inside ISO 639 is more than exceptional.
> 1-ISO recommendation R 639 (November 1967) includes the code element "Sh" as symbol for the language (name) "Serbo-Croat/Serbo-croate", having indexes "861/862", that is part of the slavonic language family, inside the UDC (Universal Decimal Codification) and combination "Sh/YU/" with the country (name) symbol concerning Yugoslavia.
> 2-ISO 639 standard (1988-04-01) includes, amonge of its 136 initial alpha-2 code elements, the alpha-2 code element "sh" for the representation of the language name "Srpskohrvatski/serbo-croate/Serbo-Croatian", as well as "hr" for the language name "Hrvatski/croate/Croatian" and "sr" for the language name "Srpski/serbe/Serbian"..
There is no entry concerning the language name "Bosnian"
> 3-ISO 639-2 (1998-10-22), whose introduction writes "The languages (names) listed in ISO 639-1are a subset of the languages (names) listed in this part of ISO 639; every language code (element) in the two letters code set has a corresponding language code (element) in the alpha-3 list, but not necessarily vice-versa.", includes an alpha-3 (binary) entry "scr/hrv" for the language name "Croatian/croate", and also another (binary) alpha-3 entry "scc/srp" for the language name "Serbian/serbe", but does not include any alpha-3 code element for an entry language name "Serbo-Croatian/serbo-croate", so that the promiss given inside ISO 639-2 introduction is not fulfilled concerning the ISO 639(-1) alpha-2 code element "sh" that has no alpha-3 ISO 639-2 counterpart. There is no entry concerning the language name "Bosnian".
> 4-Between 1992 and 1993, four (Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Macedonia) of the six Republics that were formerly united inside the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia acquired independance, became Member States of the United Nations and received alpha-2 ISO 3166-1 code elements.
> 5-On 2000-02-18, ISO 639/RA-JAC decided to deprecate the ISO 639(-1) alpha-2 code element "sh" "because there were separate language code (elements) for each language (name) represented (Serbian, Croatian and then Bosnian was added.).
> 6-On the same day, ISO 639/RA-JAC decided the addition of a new alpha-2 code element "bo" inside ISO 639 and of a new alpha-3 code element "bos" inside ISO 639-2 to represent the language name "Bosnian/ bosniaque" (along with the addition of 24 others entries inside ISO 639-2 on the same day; but among them only "Sign languages" received only an alpha-3 ISO 639-2 code element "sgn" and no alpha-2 ISO 639-1 code element).
> 7-Nevertheless, ISO 639-1 (2002-07-18) reintegrated the alpha-2 code element "sh" representing the language name "srpskohrvatski (jezik)/ serbo-croate/ Serbo-Croatian)" as an entry, along with the three others code elements "bs", "hr" and "sr" for representing respectively the three language names "bosanski (jezik)/ bosniaque/ Bosnian", "hrvatski jezik/ croate/ Croatian" and "srpski (jezik)/ serbe/ Serbian".
> 8-On 2005-YY-XX, after this reintegration inside ISO 639-1, the language name "Serbo-Croat" was never included as a new entry inside ISO 639-2, and in 2005 (no more precise datation given) the ISO 639/RA-JAC decided to "reaffirm the deprecated status of "sh" inside ISO 639-1
> 9-ISO 639-3 (2007-02-05) includes the following entries "bos" (Bosnian), "hbs" (Serbo-Croatian, explicitely linked to "sh" [deprecated]), "hrv" (Croatian), "srp" (Serbian), as well as "mkd" (Macedonian, with also "mk" [and CDU index 866 inside the slavic language family]already inside ISO 639: 1988) and "slv" (Slovenian, with also CDU index 863 inside the slavic language family] already inside ISO 639: 1988; moreover, the language name "Slovenian" has the symbol "Sn" and the combination "Sn/YU" inside ISO R 639 (1967).
> 10-On 2008-04-07, the Croatian National and University Library, the Croatian Standard Institute, the National Library of Serbia and the Institute for Standardization of Serbia jointly wrote a letter to the ISO 639-2 Registration Authority and to the ISO Central Secretary to explain that the alpha-3 ISO 6392/B code elements "scr" and "scc", that were abreviations for "Serbo-Croatian written in Roman alphabet" and "Serbo-Croatian written in cyrillic alphabet" should no more be used and that the corresponding alpha-3 ISO 639-2/T code elements "hrv" and "srp" should replace them to represent respectively the Serbian and Croatian language names inside ISO 639-2.
On 2008-06-28, ISO 639/RA-JAC accepted this claim and decided to deprecate "scc" and "scr" respectively in favor of "hrv" and "srp".
> 11-ISO 639-5 (2008-05-15) includes the entry "sla", that an alpha-3 ISO 639-5 code element to represent the family language name "Slavic languages (remainder group)", that is under the hierarchy of the alpha-3 ISO 639-5 code element "ine" to represent the family language name "Indo-European (remainder group)."
Bien cordialement.
Gérard LANG
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