I think a big part of it is preserving languages. Marathi, Gujarati, Oriya, etc. Aren't going anywhere. But Manx, Cornish, Welsh, Navajo, etc. are endangered. Having an ISO 639-1 Code helps bring awareness. Other endangered languages don't have that kind of impact that the celtic languages did, or the local government doesn't want them preserved.
Was surprised at the exclusion of the major non-Mandarin Chinese languages (Cantonese, Wu, Xiang, Hakka). They seem to approach it in a very ethno-centric way. Great quiz!
Not even really tho. They make a distinction between Bosnian and Croatian when linguists generally agree they are dialects of the same language, Serbo-Croatian, but the speakers would consider themselves different. But they also break up Akan into itself and Twi, even though they are seen as generally a single ethnic group.
Also, they include about 40 european languages but only eight native american languages, like 3 Austronesian, and only 3 Sino-Tibetan. They also for some reason include the official languages of SA but then only include a few other African languages.
I know it's arbitrary but this entire thing makes 0 sense and it makes me want to smash my head against my wall and it was probably just made to make Europeans happy by recognizing their multiple barely different languages but then just saying, "screw the rest of the world it's not like they matter".
Well, there are four Sino-Tibetan languages here (Chinese, Burmese, Tibetan, and Dzongkha), and many languages of Oceania are also Austronesian languages, but your point is really true. They do not even have Palauan, Tuvaluan, Gilbertese, Comorian, and Seychellois creole, even though they are official languages in at least one country.
Smash your head no longer! ISO-639-1 is short because it only records the two letter language codes (like ru for Russian or en for English) which is clearly not enough. ISO-639-3 is far more comprehensive.
(also -1 was last updated in like 2003, so there's that too)
Also, they include about 40 european languages but only eight native american languages, like 3 Austronesian, and only 3 Sino-Tibetan. They also for some reason include the official languages of SA but then only include a few other African languages.
I know it's arbitrary but this entire thing makes 0 sense and it makes me want to smash my head against my wall and it was probably just made to make Europeans happy by recognizing their multiple barely different languages but then just saying, "screw the rest of the world it's not like they matter".
(also -1 was last updated in like 2003, so there's that too)