Jonathan Rosenne wrote:
>
> The ISO language code for Hebrew is iw. This is an unreasonable choice, and
> many people use he or hb instead. I think Microsoft also supports he.
What's unreasonable about it? It is an abbreviation of a romanized
German-style spelling of the Hebrew word for Hebrew, namely 'iwrit'. The
English romanization would be 'ivrit'. So what? Where is it written that
the names have to make sense in *English*? If we could have used the first
two letters of Hebrew in Hebrew for Hebrew, then it would make a little
more sense, but in the present circumstances, what can you do? At least
it's recognizable to people who use the language.
Just for fun, here are a few names of widely known languages, in those
languages, with an Internet country code where applicable. Sometimes the
country code is from the English, and sometimes from the local name. You
expect sense? The language abbreviations are just as bad, but no worse, and
of course there is no necessary connection between language and country
names.
Most people would recognize these language names, but perhaps not all the
country codes:
.de Deutsch
.fr Français
.se Svenska
.es Español
.it Italiano
But what about these? Of course on this list everybody should be able to
figure some of them out, and somebody besides me should know them all.
Extra credit if you know what script is used for each:
.vn Ao Lac
.ir Farsi
.kr Hangungmal
.hr Hrvatska
.il Idish
.cn Jongguohua
.kh Khmer
.ke Kikuyu
.pt Ladinao
.jp Nihongo
.ru Russkiy yazik
.lk Sinhala
.yu Srpska
.fi Suomi
.ph Tagalog
.pk Urdu
Edward Cherlin Ask. Someone knows. cherlin@newbie.net
Vice President Everything should be made as simple as possible,
NewbieNet, Inc. __but no simpler__. Albert Einstein
http://www.newbie.net/Mentors/Cherlin/Newbie_Pages/new39.html (Spam)
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