[Wikipedia-l] Re: SIL Ethnologue vs. ISO codes for determination of language inclusion

Tue Jun 1 00:43:45 UTC 2004

Jay Bowks wrote:
> The SIL ethnologue list is quite flawed.
> In this respect the ISO codes are more
> dependable...
> 
> The Ethnologue lists
> http://www.ethnologue.com/show_family.asp?subid=827
> Esperanto, Europanto, and Interlingua.
> It further mentions that Interlingua is
> a language of France...
> http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=INR
> It also claims that Esperanto is a language
> of France, and that it has "200 to 2,000 people who
> speak it as first language". If so it would be a
> natural and non-artificial language for them
> wouldn't it, those French native speakers of
> Esperanto.... Highly irregular!
> 
> The list is flawed, and the fact that they include
> "Europanto" is quite a joke, no kidding,
> Europanto was a joke language developed
> by translators within the EU and only for
> amusement. To exclude Volapük which
> had at one time hundreds of thousands
> of learners and users and still has a small
> community of active users is just wrong
> if one is going to include "Europanto"
> which no one really uses as a community
> except joking translators within the
> EU Brussels, European Union buildings...
> as Ethnologue points out.

We're not interested in language classification, number of native 
speakers or country of origin, so I don't really care if there are 
errors in that respect. We are not suggesting using the ethnologue as 
the only source for our articles on languages. Mistakes in the inclusion 
or non-inclusion of languages I'll admit is a more serious issue. 
However I did point out that SIL has little time for artificial 
languages, so mistakes in this section are hardly suprising.

-- Tim Starling