[Gnso-newgtld-wg-wt5] Notes and Action Items - New gTLD Subsequent Procedures PDP Work Track 5 - 04 April 2018

[Jaap Akkerhuis]

 Annebeth Lange writes:


 > Would a possibility be to include only the official language(s) of all
 > countries, or would that be too much as well? I agree with Javier that
 > UN Languages, plus the official language of the country is the easiest.
 > However, it is fairly restricted, as there are many languages in the
 > world used extensively by others, to take German and Portuguese as an
 > example.


At first sight this seems easy, but I'm afraid it is yet another can
of worms. One needs to define what "Official languages" means.

When the second Edition on of 3166-1 came out in 2006, a columns where
added which contains additional information. The description of this
column is (quoting ISO 3166-1-2006):

	- 9 (informative) The alpha-2 ISO 639 code element of each
	    administrative language of the country (with a dash when the
	    code element is missing);

	- 10 (informative) The alpha-3 (terminological version) ISO
	     639 code element of each administrative language of the
	     country (with a dash when the code element is missing);

The term "administrative language" is chosen because there don't seem
to be a list of official languages of a country available.

The path to such a list will be way more complicated then one hopes.
Here are some random problems:

	For the Netherlands, the ISO OBP lists in part 1 NLD (Dutch)
	only but for part 2 list for a subdivision Frisian as well.
	And as far as I know, Frisian can be used as official language
	under certain conditions (in court is one of them). The CIA
	handbook list a couple more as being used
	<https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2098.html#nl>.
	On the Government site I found an article stating that for the
	revision of the constitutions maybe it is time to say
	something about the language used
	<https://www.government.nl/latest/news/2010/02/12/dutch-language-enshrined-in-the-constitution>.

	For India, ISO lists two languages for part 1 (eng, hin), and
	part 2 just one (en) while the CIA fact book lists a 14
	official languages.

	The USA doesn't has an official language and there are regular
	heated debates whether there should be one.

I'm afraid that this will lead to yet another extensive discussion but
not a lot of results that can be used in the scope of this work track.

	jaap