Dear colleagues (apologies for cross-posting), Sevilay (CCed) and I have submitted an application to the ISO 639-3 registrar for a new three-letter code for Sevilay's native language, Iraqi Türkman, to be added to the standard: https://iso639-3.sil.org/request/2020-039
The registration authority is currently accepting comments from the public (until December 15th), which are taken into consideration when the decision is made to approve the request or not. We would like to ask you to consider submitting a comment. Because of how the world works, an ISO code is the next step towards recognition of the existence of the language among academics and industry. Hence it is also a major prerequisite for providing access to language technology, which in turn has the potential to reinforce continued use and intergenerational transmission of the language. One concern those reviewing the application might have is the similarity of the language to other Western Oghuz varieties, like Turkish and Azerbaycani. This is a valid concern—there is some level of mutual intelligibility of the spoken varieties, and many speakers of Iraqi Türkman do have some level of exposure to Turkish. However, the varieties are linguistically rather divergent, and there are distinct literary traditions. Furthermore, official classification of Iraqi Türkman as a dialect of Turkish (i.e., denial of the application along these lines) runs the risk of denying speakers of Iraqi Türkman access to materials in their own language, whether already existing or yet to be created. Please feel free to contact Sevilay and/or me with any questions about any of this. -- Jonathan _______________________________________________ Apertium-stuff mailing list Apertium-stuff@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/apertium-stuff
