> > > As to la-IT, when Latin was a living language, there > > was no country called Italy - there were Latium, > > Etruria, Umbria, etc., and later the Roman Empire. > > Exactly. Much better though I still don't think it's > right would be "la-VA" for Vatican City. Of course > this Latin isn't really the same latin as found in the > classics either is it. It probably doesn't help for > orthographic purposes which I feel is the most > important reason for the "country" or "variety" field > of the language code existing in the first place. >
The problem with historical languages is that you need to specify a time as well. For example, en-GB-1600 is rather different from en-GB-2002 (have a look at Shakespeare). A dictionary based on a renaissance mathematician is one historical slice of Latin, and different from la-GB-1400, as well as from la-IT-1100. Until ISO get this sorted out, which I suppose might happen, I suggest that we avoid using kludges to handle dead languages and historical versions of living languages. (Although the ability to set my locale to en-GB-1600 would be rather cool -- 'Thou hast changed thy document. Dost thou wish to retain thy changes on disk?') -- David Chart http://www.dchart.demon.co.uk/
