1 Dec 01:06
Criteria for languages?
CE Whitehead <cewcathar <at> hotmail.com>
2009-12-01 00:06:58 GMT
2009-12-01 00:06:58 GMT
Hi. This is a follow-up to my previous (Wednesday, Nov. 25) post (http://www.alvestrand.no/pipermail/ietf-languages/2009-November/009620.html).
1. Latgalian and Latvian
I went through the rest of the Latgalian language links.
The problem for the first newspaper linked to, based in the heart of Latgalia, is that neither the Latgalian language newspaper supplement--"Moras zeme"--nor the Latvian language newspaper "Rezeknes Vestis" makes use of anything but a character set declaration as far as I can determine.
However the newspaper "Latgales Laiks" (http://www.latgaleslaiks.lv/lv/) does use a Latvian language tag because its language is Latvian, while the cultural supplement in Latgalian to this newspaper, "Latgalisu Gazeta," does not use a language tag (this seems to verify that tags are being used for Latvian but not for Latgalian, but read on).
The publishing house does provide keywords in English, Russian, and Latvian, using appropriate language tags for this section but otherwise does not use a language tag.
Two of the music groups are linked to via http://www.borowa.lv/ whose content-language is identified as Latvian; I don't know either Latgalian or Latvian so cannot say but assume for now that the content is standard Latvian.
(I could not link to the groups' sites themselves.)
Several of the literature sites do identify that the content is Latgalian in the keywords--I assume that this is done in lieu of tagging the language.
Latgalian has been developing separately from Latvian since 1621 according to Wikipedia and for a time Latgalia was under Russia until opting to join Latvia circa 1920:
"The language or dialect is called Latgalian.
From 2004 on, the Latgalian language is the subject of the biggest sociolinguistic/ethnolinguistic poll in Europe, held by the Rēzekne Augstskola and the Centre d'Étude Linguistiques Pour l'Europe."
In addition,
"Originally the territory of what is now Latgale was populated by Eastern Baltic tribes, whose language became the basis for both modern Latgalian and standard Latvian. Many Latgalians still speak the local dialect, which has a standardized written form and is therefore considered a separate language,"
according again to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latgalia
According to www.ethnologue.com ,
the language lv (latvian) is spoken by among others, Latgalians; see:
http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=lav
(I don't know if this means that they speak Latvian proper, or their language Latgalian is being considered to be Latvian, but I suspect the former and maybe also the latter since Latgalian is clasified as an East Latvian dialect--is this the answer to your question??)
To me, since Latgalia n has its own distinct writing system, and its own literature (thus meeting the criteria for a separate language at ethnologue; http://www.ethnologue.com/ethno_docs/introduction.asp#language_id),
I do not see any problem with its getting its own language subtag.
(Though Early Modern French is written differently than Modern French and has its own literature too and it only got a variant subtag--but this is a modern language of course.)
2. Walliser German
I have more questions about Walliser German--which does not seem to be a written language at all (though it may be in use in emails??).
My feeling is that Walliser German and Walser German are closely related enough that the can be classified together
but I may be wrong
(although Walliser German is at present neither classified nor mentioned at ethnologue--
it's sometimes classified together with Walser German as a Swiss German dialect;
however I've seen neither Walser nor Walliser German classified as a subdialect of the other but they are clearly related;
see: http://www.walser-alps.eu/dialect/walliser-german for the classification of these under Swiss German--
but Ethnologue has recently decided that these are not Swiss German).
Once a language tag ([wts] or [wae]--I don't care) is assigned to both,
I'd be happy to see a request for a variant sub! tag for Walliser German.
This would prevent the Walliser German subtag's being deprecated down the road when a subtag for Walser German is approved--but neither is really written of course.
Best,
C. E. Whitehead
cewcathar <at> hotmail.com
Criteria for languages?
CE Whitehead cewcathar at hotmail.com
Wed Nov 25 01:02:21 CET 2009
> Hi. I'm not sure what you are asking here, Mark.
>As far as Latgalian goes, according to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latgalian_language),
> "Sometimes it is referred to as a distinct separate language, while others consider it to be a dialect of Latvian."
_______________________________________________ Ietf-languages mailing list Ietf-languages <at> alvestrand.no http://www.alvestrand.no/mailman/listinfo/ietf-languages
> "ß" isn't a display form for "ss" any more than "ö" is a display
> form for "oe".
John is quite correct here.
> They are different characters. One could plausibly consider them
> display forms if "ß" could be substituted for every instance of "ss"
> or "ö" could reasonable be substituted for every instance of "oe",
> but that is not the case: Göthestraße is just wrong, not a display
> variation of Goethestrasse.
And Eisstrasse might conceivably be Eisstraße, but it is certainly not
Eißtrasse.
Michael Everson * 
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