Talk:ISO 639-2

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What's the difference between "bibliographic use" and "terminological use"?--218.102.231.133 03:22, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

The difference reflects the way that ISO 639-2 was put together. For about twenty years before ISO 639-2, libraries used a three-letter code to reference the language in which a book or article was written. Most of these codes were based on the English name for the language, like ger for German. The two-letter code ISO 639 (which later became ISO 639-1) was often based on the native name for a language, like de for German. It was felt that the larger ISO 639-2 standard should reflect the policy of part one rather than that of the library codes. However, lobbying from libraries, who would be a major user of the standard, forced a compromise. On the twenty-two codes where there is significant difference between library codes and ISO 639-1 codes, ISO 639-2 provides two codes, each reflecting one of these codes. The library codes from the basis of the bibliographic code, and ISO 639-1 formsthe basis of the terminological code. For most uses, where there is no existing coding system, the terminological codes are prefered. The draft ISO 639-3 standard uses terminological codes where there are two ISO 639-2 codes. To sum up, German has ISO 639-1 de, ISO 639-2/B ger, ISO 639-2/T deu and ISO 639-3 deu. --Gareth Hughes 14:34, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

Thanks--218.102.231.133 02:30, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

Bibliographic codes are an anglocentric atavism and practically deprecated. RFC 3066 says: [2.3 Choice of language tag] 3. When a language has no ISO 639-1 2-character code, and the ISO 639-2/T (Terminology) code and the ISO 639-2/B (Bibliographic) code differ, you MUST use the Terminology code. NOTE: At present, all languages for which there is a difference have 2-character codes, and the displeasure of developers about the existence of 2 code sets has been adequately communicated to ISO. So this situation will hopefully not arise.--84.188.172.180 18:42, 4 February 2006 (UTC)