Re: [geolang-comment] what is a language

[Murray Altheim <m.altheim@open.ac.uk>]

Bandholtz, Thomas wrote:

>>-----Original Message-----
>>From: Murray Altheim [mailto:m.altheim@open.ac.uk]
>>
> ...
> 
>>The Ethnologue is very cool, and while I myself don't have any
>>particular difficulty with it (being a white male whose native tongue
>>is English), there are some people who violently disagree with its
>>characterizations. Calling someone's spoken language a "dialect" can
>>end in fisticuffs in a lot of places. Do we really want to get into
>>that? I'm unclear to what end you guys are leading, other than
>>perhaps general interest.
> 
> I someone identifies an endangered language, or dialect, or whatsoever, she
> should be able to make a PSI about it. Ethnologue  did something like this
> without having heard about PSI probably. "some people who violently
> disagree" could do the same, and: here we go!


Thomas,

I agree entirely, as I don't see Northern Sierra Miwuk on the ISO
list and have some friends who speak it (and Pomo, too). But it's
not within the scope of *this* TC to do that, merely to provide
the methodology so that other people (perhaps more appropriate
bodies than OASIS) to do so. Let them step into the snakepit, not
us. If we can convince the SIL to provide a PSI set for all of
their languages, that would be great! In fact, I personally would
offer to do the work (you can pass that along) if they don't have
someone on staff to do it and they're willing to commit someone's
time to working with me. We could very likely automate it.

Murray

......................................................................
Murray Altheim                  <http://kmi.open.ac.uk/people/murray/>
Knowledge Media Institute
The Open University, Milton Keynes, Bucks, MK7 6AA, UK

      In the evening
      The rice leaves in the garden
      Rustle in the autumn wind
      That blows through my reed hut.  -- Minamoto no Tsunenobu