Re: [Ietf-languages] Fwd: Proposal for variant language subtags for German dialects

[John Cowan <[e-mail]>]

On Tue, Sep 12, 2023 at 11:43 AM Doug Ewell <[e-mail]> wrote:


> The Language Subtag Registry uses two-letter ISO 639-1 code elements as
> its basis for language subtags whenever they are available, and uses
> three-letter code elements from 639-2, 639-3, and 639-5 otherwise.
>

I realize that the word "prefix" is ambiguous.  I was not referring to
subtag prefixes, but to the way in which we often construct variant
subtags.  We can't (based on existing precedent) just use 'western' as the
variant subtag for Western German.  It needs to be 'dewest' or 'deuwest' or
something of the sort to distinguish it from variant tags representing
western varieties of other languages. The way in which variant tags are
chosen isn't regulated by the BCP, but I prefer 'deuwest'.

Lisa got this right in her proposals, although, as others have said, some
> of these may actually be varieties of Low German (nds) or Swiss German
> (gsw) rather than Standard German (de).
>

Until we hear otherwise, I am not convinced that any or all of these tags
represent varieties of Standard German.