Standardization and consistency of use of language codes

[tuurma]

I've been trying to create a demo app for the aggregated ELTeC Level1 material and noticed several issues in this process. Most important seems to be language codes. I would strongly suggest using consistent ISO codes. Atm repositories use 3-letter codes but in language/@ident 2-letter codes are often used instead. Some are also erroneous (e.g. uk instead of ua for Ukrainian).

Furthermore using hierarchical language codes, e.g. de-ch for Swiss German would make filtering results much easier in the future, because the hierarchy is already reflected in the code. Otherwise a clear taxonomy of language hierarchies is a must.

[tuurma]

To illustrate, a summary of language codes used throughout language/@ident

[lb42]

Thanks for reporting this inconsistency Magda. In general, although the repositories are named using the iso 639-3 codes, we use iso 639-2 codes for language. The schemas require a default language to be specified on the root TEI element for each text, as the value of @xml:lang, and this should be consistent for each repository.The values for language/@Ident should be consistent too, but (as you've noticed) they aren't always.

[giuliagrisot]

Hi all, @jberenike and I (we are the creators of the Swiss eltec), just had an exchange about the language, and agree that "de" seems more appropriate. There is no explicit linguistic difference between the German and the Swiss repository, as both only contain books in "High German" (we did not include works in Swiss dialect)