Philippe Verdy <verdy underscore p at wanadoo dot fr> wrote: > Lettercase can make a difference here to differentiate a script and a > region code. Suppose that there's a ISO3166-2 code "LATN" (a region > code "TN" in Lao?), how will you interpret "lo-LATN"? > > Is it the Lao language spoken in that particular region of Lao (the > country), and written with its natural script, or is it "standard" Lao > written with the Latin script ?
As I mentioned before, this will never happen, because even if an ISO 3166-2 region code did appear in a language tag (by registration, as John Cowan points out), the country and region would still be separated by a hyphen. The hypothetical region in Laos would be coded "LA-TN", and so the whole language tag would be "lo-LA-TN", distinguishable from "lo-Latn" regardless of capitalization. There is in fact no such region as LA-TN, but just for fun, I compiled a list of the codes that would be ambiguous if Philippe's hyphenless assumption were true. It's not a long list. CA-NS: Canada, Nova Scotia Cans: Unified Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics IT-AL: Italy, Alessandria Ital: Old Italic (Etruscan, Oscan, etc.) This might qualify as the first recorded frivolous use of ISO 15924 codes. -Doug Ewell Fullerton, California http://users.adelphia.net/~dewell/
