> Michka wrote :
>Most seem to be okay with the addition of the country/region tag from
>ISO-3166 for determing the difference between languages spoken in several
>places -- this is usually what is done for English, Arabic, Portuguese,
>French, and Chinese, as well.
I don't see how one can use ISO-3166 regions. The region tags don't follow
linguistic breaks even if they are roughly geographic. For example, if I
wanted to describe the Northeastern dialects of Brazilian Portuguese that
have traits such as pluralizing the article but not the noun and a heavy
native Amarican Indian influence, I would be hard pressed to find an
ISO-3166-2 designation to use.
The region might be described as a set of states where the differences in
culture between the narrow costal strip and high desert interior is greater
that the differences between states.
Carl
