> From: suzmccarth [mailto:suzmccarth@...]

> Innuktitut is a different language in everyone's book. It has a
> separate language code. They do share a writing system in the way
> that many lgs share the roman alphabet. I can't comment on that.
>
> Back to language codes though = I do notice that Naskapi does not
> have a code. I wonder if Peter Constable can comment on what the
> status of Naskapi is as a separate lg from Cree. However, there
> seems to be one code only for Cree from Quebec to Alberta so Eaatern
> and Western finals are dual encodings for the final consonants. No?

I assume you're refering to ISO 639-2? If so, it has a single identifier
for "Cree" because that's the bucket that librarians considered useful.
For any linguist, or for language resources in general, rather more
distinctions must be made. Wrt the Algonquian family as a whole, ISO
639-2 provides the following (assuming I didn't miss any):

alg Algonquian languages
arp Arapaho
chy Cheyenne
cre Cree
mic Micmac
oji Ojibwa

This leaves many things falling under the collective identifier alg, and
some particular uncertainty regarding "cre" and "oji": it's unclear
whether "cre" is intended to encompass all of the
Cree/Montagnais/Naskapi sub-family or just the chain of languages that
mainly go by the name "Cree". Similarly, it's unclear whether "oji" is
intended to encompass all the languages of the Ojibwa sub-family
(including Ottawa and Algonquin), or only those that mainly go by the
name "Ojibwa" / "Chippewa" (which would exclude Ottawa and Algonquin).

These are questions that should be getting cleared up by the ISO 639-RA
Joint Advisory Committee sometime this year. And in ISO 639-3, each
individual language, including Naskapi and the various Cree languages,
will have its own three-letter identifier.


Peter Constable