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.
No, it really is eurocentric. They made the basic list and then another list of 3-letter codes for the rest. It's quite arbitrary which ones are on this list: New ISO 639-1 codes are not added if an ISO 639-2 "set 2" three-letter code exists
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)
If this makes you want to smash your head against the wall, you need to learn control your emotions. Yes, having very specific European languages might be unnecessary, but for a long time, a majority of Apple's users came from more developed countries in Europe. Besides, when you bring up the Native American languages, there are much more Europeans than Native Americans, especially that have an iPhone.
Only thing, there are inconsistent type-ins - for some answers the exact spelling of the language is required, but for others it cuts off at the country, meaning I keep having to delete letters that I typed in correctly for the previous answer, which is most inconvenient.
Apart from that, a great quiz which will be featured soon.
I don't know the name of any of the languages spoken in Papua New Guinea, but of course, there are many, many of them. I looked up the names of some of them, but none appear on this quiz. Interesting.
Hiri Motu is from PNG. In my experience, low landers and islanders first language is Tok Pisin or English. Nearly everyone speaks a variation of pidgin
I got everything except Armenian. Somehow I thought I'd already guessed it, and spent forever trying different forms of writing Aramaic (Neo Aramaic, Neo Assyrian, Neo Syriac, Neo Syriac Aramaic etc. etc.)
If English is not your native language, then the hardest thing in this quiz is certainly how to create an adjective from a region name (at least for me).
Norwegian is a spoken language and Nynorsk and Bokmal are ways of writing it. You have to do something to make it obvious that the inset of southern Norway is looking for a written language, not a spoken one.
Like they have Serbian and Croatian separate when they’re so similar, they’re usually lumped as one. If that isn’t Eurocentric, IDK what is
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)
Only thing, there are inconsistent type-ins - for some answers the exact spelling of the language is required, but for others it cuts off at the country, meaning I keep having to delete letters that I typed in correctly for the previous answer, which is most inconvenient.
Apart from that, a great quiz which will be featured soon.