How can this be expressed in RDFS

Question

For the first time in my life, I am trying to develop an RDFS vocabulary. I wonder what is the best way to the following in RDFS:

I have thing that is called "Name". A Name can have a property "language". This language can be expressed as an ISO 693-3 code or an ISO 693-5 code.

Here is a triple stating that there is a name in the Greek language:

<http://example.org/name1> <http://example.org/vocab/language> "ell" .

A lookup of http://example.org/vocab/language could convey that the language is supposed to be a ISO 639-3 or ISO 639-5 code, as an rdf:comment.

I have found the lexvo ontology (http://lexvo.org/ontology), and I think it would be good to use it. It describes both types of ISO codes as owl:DatatypeProperty. I wonder how I could use it to improve the example and how to express it in RDFS. Here is an attempt to make the same statement using lexvo:

<http://example.org/name1> <http://lexvo.org/ontology#language>  <http://lexvo.org/id/iso639-3/ell> .

Or the ISO 639-5 alternative:

<http://example.org/name1> <http://lexvo.org/ontology#language>  <http://lexvo.org/id/iso639-5/grk> .

Does RDF like this make sense? How can I express in RDFS that the RDF should look like this?

Thanks in advance, Frans

Answer 1

What exactly is your problem? Do you want to know how RDF statements should be written and interpreted? For starters, I'd suggest getting familiar with the RDF primer. And here's a great tool that validates RDF and draws graphs based on your vocabulary: RDF validator. Seeing the graph as you write your code really .helps to understand it properly

Answer 2

I'm not sure this even requires any RDFS

Literals in RDF are allowed to have language tags which according to the RDF spec must match up with RFC 3066 which itself defers to the ISO 693 standard

So for example I can say the following:

<http://example.org/Me> <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/givenName> "Rob"@en-gb .
<http://example.org/Me> <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/givenName> "Bob"@en-us .

And you can come up with much better examples with names which would actually differ between languages which Rob doesn't really though I've found Americans do tend to be more likely to call you Bob than the British :-)