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Thomas Goldammer | 1 Apr 01:35

Re: Erzgebirgisch Classification Question

> Yep.  I forgot that I actually had very near relatives living
>  very near to the Harz-colony of "erzgeb" for a very long time,
>  and I never heard that this is in any way remarkable.  I can't
>  tell if I talked to a guy on the streets of St. Andreasberg -
>  or if I did they had no reason to talk back in their "erzbgeb"
>  language, assuming this could be hard for me to understand.
>
>

The Upper Harz variety is said to be close to extinct. Only elderly
people still speak it there (and do not hesitate to do so). Maybe
there are younger people too, but they seem to prefer standard-like
German and I don't expect them to teach their children
Erzgebirgisch... :'(

Best regards,
Thomas.
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Ciarán Ó Duibhín | 1 Apr 03:33
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Re: Erzgebirgisch Classification Question

Doug wrote:
> We should register 'erzgeb' only with the Prefix field that will be
> correct in the long term, which is "sxu", and that means we should wait
> until 'sxu' is a valid language subtag, which will happen when RFC
> 4646bis and RFC 4645bis are approved.

What I take from the discussion is that it is *not* known, in the present
state of research, which prefix, if any, will be correct in the long term
for 'erzgeb'.  And if we plump for one now (or soon, in the "sxu" case), the
rules of the game are that it can never be removed.

Until I read the above, I thought that Doug's view was that it is not
critical that the chosen prefix will be correct in the long term:

> Our goal in registering variants like 'erzgeb' is to allow legitimate
> language variations to be tagged, not to provide tags with perfect
> mnemonic or language-hierarchy value.

On that view, it comes down to whether "sxu" or "de" looks better in the
present state of our knowledge.  Thomas has magnanimously accepted "sxu",
but back in January he gave his reasons for regarding Erzgebirgisch as a
form of Franconian (and I assume Franconian would have prefix "de").  I am
uncomfortable that we might decide in favour of "sxu" without giving those
arguments due consideration.

Ciarán Ó Duibhín.
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Doug Ewell | 1 Apr 16:53
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Re: Erzgebirgisch Classification Question

Ciarán Ó Duibhín <ciaran at oduibhin dot freeserve dot co dot uk> wrote:

>> We should register 'erzgeb' only with the Prefix field that will be 
>> correct in the long term, which is "sxu", and that means we should 
>> wait until 'sxu' is a valid language subtag, which will happen when 
>> RFC 4646bis and RFC 4645bis are approved.
>
> Until I read the above, I thought that Doug's view was that it is not 
> critical that the chosen prefix will be correct in the long term:
>
>> Our goal in registering variants like 'erzgeb' is to allow legitimate 
>> language variations to be tagged, not to provide tags with perfect 
>> mnemonic or language-hierarchy value.

Sorry, I'm not writing very carefully this week; moving house is taking 
a higher priority.

What I should have said was that we should register 'erzgeb' only with 
the Prefix field with which we will be *satisfied* in the long term. 
The proposer of the subtag seemed to be satisfied with "sxu".  The 
important point is that not to think in terms of "improving" the subtag 
choice at a later date.

--
Doug Ewell  *  Fullerton, California, USA  *  RFC 4645  *  UTN #14
http://www.ewellic.org
http://www1.ietf.org/html.charters/ltru-charter.html
http://www.alvestrand.no/mailman/listinfo/ietf-languages  ˆ
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Tracey, Niall | 1 Apr 17:48
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RE: Erzgebirgisch Classification Question


Doug wrote:

> Our goal in registering variants like 'erzgeb' is to allow legitimate 
> language variations to be tagged, not to provide tags with perfect 
> mnemonic or language-hierarchy value.

Ciarán Ó Duibhín replied:
> On that view, it comes down to whether "sxu" or "de" looks better in
> the present state of our knowledge.  Thomas has magnanimously accepted
> "sxu", but back in January he gave his reasons for regarding
> Erzgebirgisch as a form of Franconian (and I assume Franconian would
> have prefix "de").  I am uncomfortable that we might decide in favour
> of "sxu" without giving those arguments due consideration.

I have a problem here, although it may be a misunderstanding on my part of the purpose of subtagging.

I can't exactly remember where I read it, but my understanding was that with regards to the web, a subtag tree
was intended to be navigable, and that it would be used to find a "best fit" page.

Taking EN as an example, if my browser identified itself as EN_UK, it would give me an EN_UK page if
available, an EN page if there was no EN_UK, but if there was only EN_US it would give that and I would
understand it.

But would a speaker of Erzgerbirgisch understand a page in Upper Saxon? Would a speaker of Upper Saxon
understand a page in Erzgerbirgisch? The same questions stand for Franconian and Erzgebirgisch?

I suspect not, although I must confess to having no knowledge of the languages.

Wouldn't an Erzgebirgisch speaker prefer a standard German page if no Erz. alternative is available,
(Continue reading)

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Ciarán Ó Duibhín | 1 Apr 17:58
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Re: Erzgebirgisch Classification Question

Doug Ewell wrote:
> What I should have said was that we should register 'erzgeb' only with
> the Prefix field with which we will be *satisfied* in the long term.
> The proposer of the subtag seemed to be satisfied with "sxu".  The
> important point is that not to think in terms of "improving" the subtag
> choice at a later date.

Thanks, I now understand better what you mean.

For me, being satisfied that "sxu" is the best prefix at present includes
being satisfied that Thomas' detailed data to the contrary has been seen and
taken into account by whichever experts are recommending "sxu" to us.  For
example, was it a considered input to the Ethnologue ruling?   As reported
to this list, that ruling appears to be based on a (necessarily sketchy)
literature survey, and actually invited "additional information".

Ciarán Ó Duibhín
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CE Whitehead | 1 Apr 20:48
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Erzgebirgisch Classification Question


Hi
It's my understanding that people who request [de-erzgeb] will not always  be served documents that are
simply tagged [de] ??
 http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc4647.txt (sections 3.3, 3.4)
It depends on how search engines process the request--is this correct?

For example, [de-erzgeb] will not yield documents tagged [de] where filtering is used::

"In filtering, each language range represents the least specific
   language tag (that is, the language tag with fewest number of
   subtags) that is an acceptable match.  All of the language tags in
   the matching set of tags will have an equal or greater number of
   subtags than the language range."

Thanks,

C. E. Whitehead
cewcathar <at> hotmail.com 

Frank Ellermann nobody at xyzzy.claranet.de 

> CE Whitehead wrote:

>> why does Frank prefer [de] to [gem]--is Erzgebirgisch
>> that close to German?

> Hi, that was in a hypothetical discussion with Doug about 
> the relevance of ISO 639-3 classifications for practical
> purposes of tagging Web pages.
(Continue reading)

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Frank Ellermann | 1 Apr 22:08
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Re: Erzgebirgisch Classification Question

CE Whitehead wrote:

> Hope my understanding is correct; I barely speak German so
> . . . whatever the German/Germanic speakers tell me.)

Germanic speakers hopefully tell you that saying "German"
is an Anglosaxon joke, after using "Dutch" for something 
else they didn't bother to find a better name... <gd&r>
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Michael Everson | 1 Apr 22:19
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RE: Erzgebirgisch Classification Question

Can we please stop discussing Erzgebirgish? There is no live proposal 
for it now It is dormant and will stay so until "sxu" is available.
--

-- 
Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com
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John Cowan | 1 Apr 23:19

Re: Erzgebirgisch Classification Question

Frank Ellermann scripsit:

> Germanic speakers hopefully tell you that saying "German"
> is an Anglosaxon joke, after using "Dutch" for something 
> else they didn't bother to find a better name... <gd&r>

You guys have more names that any ethnic group I know:

* The Real People (German, Italian)
* The Macho Guys (French, Spanish, Portuguese)
* The Short-Sword Gang (Finnish, Estonian)
* The Band of Brothers (Latin, English)
* The Gang Who Can't Talk Straight (Polish, Russian, Arabic)
* The Folks (Latvian, Lithuanian)

(Full details at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_for_Germany .)

--

-- 
John Cowan    cowan <at> ccil.org    http://ccil.org/~cowan
Nobody expects the RESTifarian Inquisition!  Our chief weapon is
surprise ... surprise and tedium  ... tedium and surprise ....
Our two weapons are tedium and surprise ... and ruthless disregard
for unpleasant facts....  Our three weapons are tedium, surprise, and
ruthless disregard ... and an almost fanatical devotion to Roy Fielding....
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John Cowan | 3 Apr 04:01

Re: Erzgebirgisch Classification Question

Ciarán � Duibhín scripsit:

> Thomas has magnanimously accepted "sxu",
> but back in January he gave his reasons for regarding Erzgebirgisch as a
> form of Franconian (and I assume Franconian would have prefix "de").  

Not necessarily: there are a number of ISO 639-3 languages that are said
to be Franconian (unfortunately the term seems to cover the whole course
of the Rhine from Upper German to Dutch varieties).

--

-- 
John Cowan      cowan <at> ccil.org        http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
        Is it not written, "That which is written, is written"?
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Gmane