The 'Linguasphere Observatory' ('Observatoire Linguistique') is a language research network. It was created in
France in
1983 and is currently based in
Wales. They have devised an innovative scheme of
philological classification, which includes a hierarchy of relationships based partly on percentages of
lexical similarity between language's core vocabularies, and also an unusual system that zigzags between genetic and geographic categories (which they call ''phylozones'' and ''geozones'', respectively; see
Linguasphere language code for more details). They also promote multilingualism.
In 1999, the Linguasphere published the Linguasphere Register of the World's Languages and Speech Communities, the second edition of which is due out in 2006. Up until December 2005, the Linguasphere's director, David Dalby, has been actively involved in a linguistic concatenation project with the British Standards Institute (BSI). This project aims to provide alpha-4 code classification for every language in the world and thus standardise language coding in computer systems.
Linguasphere ceased operations in 2006. The research and compilation of the data supporting ISO 639-6 is currently being conducted by
GeoLang Ltd.
External links
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GeoLang Ltd site