(See near the end of this article from the SSILA Bulletin 227, 8/16/05):

> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 227.2 Ethnologue Language Codes Merged with New ISO Code Set
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> >From M. Paul Lewis (Editor_Ethnologue@...) 13 August 2005:
>
> Anyone who has recently visited the Ethnologue site (www.ethnologue.com)
> will know that the new 15th edition of the Ethnologue has adopted a
> revised set of 3-letter language codes. The change is described in the
> "History of the Ethnologue" section of the Overview/Introduction, at:
>
> http://www.ethnologue.com/ethno_docs/introduction.asp#history
>
> While SIL has tried to let as many people as possible know about this
> change, many users are surprised or confused.
>
> Briefly, what has happened is this: The ISO (the International
> Organization for Standardization, www.iso.org) decided a couple of
> years ago to expand its existing (1998) standard 3-letter codes for the
> representation of names of languages (ISO 639-2) beyond the 400 or so
> languages that it had been covering to include all the known languages
> in the world. SIL was asked if it would be willing to let the ISO use
> the Ethnologue codes for this purpose. In order to do that, however,
> and maintain continuity between the ISO 639-2 and the new expanded ISO
> 639-3, SIL had to agree to change those codes in its set that didn't line
> up with the existing ISO 639-2 codes. In addition there were some codes
> reserved in the new standard for "private use," and if SIL had existing
> codes within that "codespace" it had to agree to change those as well.
> In the end, SIL had to change about 400 of its approximately 7300 3-letter
> language codes to accommodate the merger with the ISO codes.
>
> The new SIL/ISO code set, though still a "draft" (it is expected that it
> will be fully implemented by the ISO in 2006), was introduced in the 15th
> edition of Ethnologue, which came online a few months ago. SIL has also
> agreed to serve as the "administrative authority" for the coding of living
> languages--supervising the addition of new language codes, merging codes,
> removing codes, etc. LinguistList will provide the equivalent service
> for extinct and classical languages that Ethnologue does not include in
> its inventory.
>
> The new SIL/ISO language codes are represented by lower case letters,
> and Ethnologue has further adopted the convention of placing them between
> square brackets (e.g. [abc]). The case distinction can be used to
> customize the Ethnologue URL for a specific language to return a page
> with information about that language *either* from the "old" 14th edition
> or from the "new" 15th edition. The form of the URL is:
>
> http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=CCC
>
> where the CCC can be any 3-letter language code. If the three letters
> are upper case, the data from the 14th edition will be returned with a
> "banner" indicating that the data has been superseded by data in the 15th
> edition and indicating any code change that has been made. However, if
> the CCC is three lower case letters, the system will take that to be a
> "new" ISO code and return only the 15th edition data.
>
> Full technical details of the new language coding system, with downloadable
> code tables and other features, can be found at:
>
> http://www.ethnologue.com/codes/default.asp
>
> The editors of Ethnologue recognize that this transition period is going
> to require all of the code users to make adjustments and update any
> databases they have created using the previous coding system, but they
> believe that in the long run the larger community of users will be better
> served by having an internationally recognized and agreed-upon system for
> identifying all of the known languages of the world.
>
> --M. Paul Lewis, Ethnologue Editor
> (www.ethnologue.com)

--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...