To chime in, the "macrolanguage" codes in ISO 639-3 do indeed refer to groups of languages, rather than individual languages -- your example of Chinese is probably the best known case of this. There are 30 macrolanguage codes in the set (for a table of them see <a href="http://www.sil.org/iso639-3/macrolanguages.asp">http://www.sil.org/iso639-3/macrolanguages.asp</a>). The reason for their inclusion in the ISO set is for purposes of historical reference (they were entities in previous codesets) and utility.<br>
<br>SIL, the organization that maintains the codeset, explains macrolanguage this way:<br><br>"In various parts of the world, there are clusters of closely-related
language varieties that, based on the criteria discussed above, can be
considered distinct individual languages, yet in certain usage contexts
a single language identity for all is needed. Typical situations in
which this need can occur include the following:
<ul><li> There is one variety that is more developed and that tends to be
used for wider communication by speakers of various closely-related
languages; as a result, there is a perceived common linguistic identity
across these languages. For instance, there are several distinct spoken
Arabic languages, but Standard Arabic is generally used in business and
media across all of these communities, and is also an important aspect
of a shared ethno-religious unity. As a result, a perceived common
linguistic identity exists.</li><li> There is a common written form used for multiple closely-related
languages. For instance, multiple Chinese languages share a common
written form.</li><li> There is a transitional socio-linguistic situation in which
sub-communities of a single language community are diverging, creating
a need for some purposes to recognize distinct languages while, for
other purposes, a single common identity is still valid. For instance,
in some contexts it is necessary to make a distinction between Bosnian,
Croatian and Serbian languages, yet there are other contexts in which
these distinctions are not discernible in language resources that are
in use."</li></ul><div style="margin-left: 40px;">(see <a href="http://www.sil.org/iso639-3/scope.asp#M">http://www.sil.org/iso639-3/scope.asp#M</a>)<br><br></div>In practice, since macrolanguages are always groupings of closely related languages,
the Rosetta base will have matching group entity (so, for example, <a href="http://www.freebase.com/view/base/rosetta/group/Chinese" target="_blank">http://www.freebase.com/view/base/rosetta/group/Chinese</a> ). However, my sense is that the Freebase entity Chinese is actually semantically quite different from the Rosetta group Chinese, which refers to a particular taxonomic level as well as an entity with a particular kind of linguistic meaning.<br>
<br><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, May 4, 2009 at 5:37 PM, Kurt Bollacker <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:kurt@spaceship.com">kurt@spaceship.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<br>
<br>
> I've flagged a few things for merger, but now I've come across<br>
> something that I can't even flag<br>
> <a href="http://www.freebase.com/view/base/rosetta/group/Chinese" target="_blank">http://www.freebase.com/view/base/rosetta/group/Chinese</a> (because of<br>
> permissions perhaps?)<br>
<br>
oooh.. You picked a good one. Chinese is one of the few lingusitic<br>
entities that the linguists consider to be a "macrolanguage" or<br>
"language group" rather than a specific language. The Freebase topic<br>
for Chinese:<br>
<br>
<a href="http://www.freebase.com/view/en/chinese_language" target="_blank">http://www.freebase.com/view/en/chinese_language</a><br>
<br>
includes both the "language" and "group" properties in an intuitive<br>
(but non-rigorous to linguists) way. A good indicator of this is the<br>
fact that this topic is typed both "Human Language" and "Language<br>
Family", which is taxonomically impossible. However, for the real<br>
world, this entropy is OK.<br>
<br></blockquote></div><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>Laura Welcher, Ph.D.<br>The Long Now Foundation<br>Director of Development and The Rosetta Project<br><br><a href="mailto:laura@longnow.org">laura@longnow.org</a><br>ph.415.561.6582<br>
fx.415.561.6297<br><a href="http://www.longnow.org">http://www.longnow.org</a><br><a href="http://www.rosettaproject.org">http://www.rosettaproject.org</a><br>