I have not contributed to this heated discussion previously, but
Dana Emery's list of language prompted some interest. I append a list
of languages in use at the National Library of Medicine (NLM). I suspect
that ANY such list is going to have it deficiencies, based on the inevitable
needs and subtle biases of the individual or institution involved. This
list lumps all dialects of Chinese together (and by the way, I am not
aware of a "traditional, or taiwanese chinese," only of a non-Chinese
tongue spoken by the indigenous people, and the Mandarin/Cantonese/...
dialects spoken by the more recent Chinese inhabitants. The following list
lumps all N. American native tongues into one category. However, I did
not notice "Pushto" on Dana's list 8^)
Cheerio, Rick Rodgers
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Afrikaans AFR
Albanian ALB
Arabic ARA
Armenian ARM
Azerbaijani AZE
Belorussian BEL
Bengali BEN
Bulgarian BUL
Burmese BUR
Central_American_Indian CAI
Catalan CAT
Chinese CHI
Czech CZE
Danish DAN
Dutch DUT
English ENG
Eskimo ESK
Esperanto ESP
Estonian EST
Finnish FIN
French FRE
Gaelic GAE
Georgian GEO
German GER
Greek GRC
Greek (Modern) GRE
Hausa HAU
Hebrew HEB
Hindi HIN
Hungarian HUN
Icelandic ICE
Indonesian IND
Interlingua INT
Italian ITA
Japanese JPN
Kirghiz KIR
Latin LAT
Latvian LAV
Lithuanian LIT
Macedonian MAC
Maori MAO
Marathi MAR
Masai MAS
Malay MAY
Moldavian MOL
Multilingual MUL
North American Indian NAI
Norwegian NOR
Persian (Modern) PER
Polish POL
Portuguese POR
Pushto PUS
Rumanian RUM
Russian RUS
Sanskrit SAN
Serbo-Croatian, Cyrillic SCC
Serbo-Croatian, Roman SCR
Slovak SLO
Slovene SLV
Singhalese SNH
Spanish SPA
Swahili SWA
Swedish SWE
Tagalog TAG
Tamil TAM
Telugu TEL
Thai THA
Turkish TUR
Ukrainian UKR
Undetermined UND
Urdu URD
Vietnamese VIE
Welsh WEL
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R. P. C. Rodgers, M.D. Computer Science Branch
rodgers(_at_)nlm(_dot_)nih(_dot_)gov (Internet) Lister Hill
National Center
rodgers(_at_)nlm(_dot_)nih(_dot_)gov(_dot_)arpa (BITNET) for
Biomedical Communication
(301)496-9300 (office) National Library of Medicine, NIH
(301)496-0673 (fax) 8600 Rockville Pike
(301)564-9343 (home) Bethesda MD 20894 USA