Hail XSL(T)/XSD

Sometimes I just have to wonder what implementors think of XML data exchange:

<MotherTongue1>German</MotherTongue1>
<MotherTongue1Id>2001</MotherTongue1Id>
<MotherTongue2>German</MotherTongue2>
<MotherTongue2Id>2001</MotherTongue2Id>

Upon clarification, no hierarchy should be implied... Attributes seem to have been lost in wonderland. And oh, the id is an index into a proprietary table of languages, some misspelled, some invalid, some multiple times. ISO 639 anyone?

Want to contact a person described in the XML file? Well, there are

<EmailExternal>
<EmailExternal2>
<EmergencyEmail>
[and more]

.. all scattered around in different parts of the file, of course.

At least I have a properly designed and documented schema?! Oh wait, all it does is assign base datatypes to those fields - and then incorrectly. Birth dates are xsl:dateTimes as xsl:date somehow is "not available", other dates are xsl:strings (diversly formatted)... oh and:

<s:element minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="1" name="Gender" type="s:string"/>

means "m" or "w" (female, german: weiblich), of course...