Monthly Archives: May 2010

browsing by theme drives traffic

Unsurprisingly, allowing people to browse Mightyverse phrase recordings around a theme increased website traffic. When we released the Browse by Phrase List feature, we saw the average number of pages per visit go from just over 1 to almost 5. We also saw an increase in tweets and Facebook links which drove an increase in unique visitors (shown in the graph below) around Hawaiian phrase lists, first released on April 9th and later around Na’vi phrases released on May 9th.

The overall numbers are still quite small, but it exciting to see a response to these specific workflow improvements, where our gut instincts for how we believe people will want to use the website are validated by quantitative metrics.

Na'vi language code

Today, I needed to look up a language code for Na’vi, the language natively spoken on the fictional moon Pandora, created by Paul Frommer for the movie Avatar.  When adding a new language to Mightyverse, we record the ISO codes and use them in the URL of a search and someday we’ll cross-link with amazing language resources like Ethnologue. Usually these codes are easy to find.  Not today.

I worry when the most authoritative reference I can find is wikipedia, which reports that the ISO 639-2 code is ‘art’.

Language identification moves at infrequent intervals.  It is not like being assigned a port number. I read further that the most recent ISO 639-3 change request list was approved on January 20, 2010 and I didn’t see Na’vi there.  It is likely queued up with the 2010 change requests.

I read that ISO uses the prefix ‘art’ for artificial languages.  (The art code is on the 639-2 list and therefore also part of 639-3).  So, the full RFC3066 (really RFC4646) code would be ‘art-nav’, which is also the wiktionary code.  So, until we get the official word in January 2011 or whenever RFC4646 codes get ratified, here’s what I’m going with:

  • ISO 639-1:  n/a
  • ISO 639-2:  art
  • ISO 639-3: art
  • RFC3066  : art-nav