ISO-639-6
From Wikistandards
The ISO-639-6 is a future version of the ISO-639 standard. It aims to bring all linguistic entities in a hierarchical structure. Linguistic entities are everything from language families to spoken dialects and everything in between.
[edit] Scope and aim
The initial target for this standard is to include some 25.000 entries. To allow for such a large number of codes, the ISO-639-6 will have four Roman characters. This standard will include the existing ISO-639 standards, including ISO-639-3 and present it in an hierarchical structure. This is to make it easier to understand what the relation is between different linguistic entities.
Orthographies are not in scope for this standard.
[edit] Publication of the CD data
It has been agreed that the Committee Draft data for the ISO-639-6 will be published at the OmegaWiki website. This was discussed at the technical committee Vienna 2006 meeting that was convened and coincided with the LSGB Vienna meeting.
As the data is published in a Wiki, a wiki with relational data extensions, it is possible for people to comment and improve on the data. The OmegaWiki data is freely licensed; it will be possible for people to use the data to make the ISO-639-6 and by implication the correct tagging of linguistic items easy and correct.
