Doug Ewell wrote:
> They are not listed in the HTML page on Michael Everson's site, which
> claims to be "complete and up-to-date as of 2000-02-19." But they are
> listed in a text file, "Technical contents of ISO 639:1988," originally
> typed by Keld Simonsen, which I had ignored in favor of the version on
> Everson's site.
The problem is in fact more serious. The four languages Tigrinya (ti), Tonga (to),
Turkish (tr), and Yoruba (yo) do not have their ISO 639-1 codes listed
either at M.E.'s site (http://www.egt.ie/standards/iso639/iso639-en.html)
*or* at the official Library of Congress site
(http://lcweb.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/langhome.html), from which Michael's
list presumably derives. I have therefore copied this message to the official 639-2
complaint address.
I do not have the paper ISO 639-1, and there appears to be no official Web
version, but I have examined over a hundred witnesses available on the Web,
derived from perhaps five manuscript traditions (including Keld Simonsen's),
and they are nearly unanimous in declaring ti, to, tr, and yo to be legitimate 639-1
codes. The sole exception is a text which may confidently be rejected as
corrupt, since it purports to affirm that Welsh is a species of Gaelic!
In the case of Tonga, there may perhaps be a legitimate doubt whether to equate
the "to" (Tonga) code with "tog" (Tonga (Nyasa)) or with
"ton" (Tonga (Tonga Islands)), or with both.
--Schlingt dreifach einen Kreis um dies! || John Cowan <jcowan@reutershealth.com> Schliesst euer Aug vor heiliger Schau, || http://www.reutershealth.com Denn er genoss vom Honig-Tau, || http://www.ccil.org/~cowan Und trank die Milch vom Paradies. -- Coleridge (tr. Politzer)
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