[Mageia-discuss] IRC community channels - need a ruling from the board

andré andr55 at laposte.net
Sun Oct 10 05:54:52 CEST 2010


Wolfgang Bornath a écrit :
> 2010/10/4 Marc Paré<marc at marcpare.com>:
>    
>> The ISO country codes were devised for such situations. The recognized
>> German language code is now "ger" as seen by the ISO Country code charts.
>>      
> Thanks for this lecture, it's the first time I even hear/read about
> those 3-letter codes. In all the years of internet usage, in web,
> usenet, mail I never came across this. Whenever somebody referred to
> Germany and the language German it was "de". You never stop
> learning...
>
> So we should change all the URLs for the language-specific pages like
> mageia.org/de into mageia.org/ger (and all other languages) same with
> the IRC channels, unless the channels are country-related. I wonder
> whether the users of such pages and channels know this. I don't think
> that anybody in Germany would search for "ger"...
>
> How would you suggest to solve this?
>    
Language codes are regulated by iso 639.
According to Wikipedia, there are 4 different codes available for the 
german language.
"de" is defined under iso 639-1
"ger" is a "bibliographic" code defined under 639-2, for compatibility 
with historical usage.  (As used in english, probably.)
"deu" is a "technical" code defined under 639-2, for other usages.
It is also the code defined under 639-3.
Note that 639-2 defines codes for *groups* of languages.

Since for IRC usage, one is definitely NOT seeking compatibility with 
historical (probably english language) usage, "ger" should NOT be used.

If I were you, I would continue to use "de".  But you could always 
switch to "deu" if you want a 3-letter code.

- André (andre999)


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