Re: [Ietf-languages] Language subtag registration form

[Peter Constable <[e-mail]>]

> There is an argument for calling it the "Bornholmsk" variety of Scanian, but Scanian was stripped of its ISO 693-3 language status in 2009.

That's not accurate: Scanian never had language status in ISO 639-3.

It was listed in Ethnologue 14th edn as a language, and since E14 (or, more precisely, pre-pub draft content for E15) was the starting point for the draft code table of CD ISO 639-3, Scanian was included in drafts of 639-3. But the Swedish national body voted against the DIS, requiring that Scanian be removed, and since there were no other national bodies requesting that it be kept, it was removed in the initial code table of 639-3.

In 2009, there was a request for Scanian to be added to 639-3. The request was rejected on the grounds that Scanian was considered mutually intelligible with Swedish, as "acknowledged by the requester himself." See:

https://iso639-3.sil.org/request/2009-049


> It might be better to introduce it as the "Bornholmsk Scandinavian dialect".

If it's coded as a variant subtag, then any use must assume some primary subtag. The subtag proposal has "da" as the prefix. If that's the proposal, then "variety of Danish" would be consistent.

I'm not an expert on the language network in question. I'm just commenting on the history, which I do know, on what BCP 47 specifies should be done to code a "language", and on what will make for a consistent entry.


Peter

-----Original Message-----
From: Ietf-languages <[e-mail]> On Behalf Of Richard Wordingham
Sent: Saturday, March 9, 2019 5:20 AM
To: [e-mail]
Subject: Re: [Ietf-languages] Language subtag registration form

On Sat, 9 Mar 2019 03:47:44 +0000
Peter Constable <petercon=[e-mail]> wrote:

> Now that there's convergence on a tag, how about this (emphasis
> added):
> 
> 4. Intended meaning of the subtag:
>      The Bornholmsk _language_, spoken on the Danish island of 
> Bornholm, which has distinct grammar, lexicon, gender system and 
> pronunciation when compared to Danish.
> 
> If the assertion is that this is a distinct language, then a variant 
> subtag is not really appropriate, and the response should be that a 
> request should first be redirected to the ISO 639-3 RA.
> 
> So, let me ask: Is the request really to code a distinct _language_, 
> or should the description be revised to say "The Bornholmsk variety of 
> Danish"?

There is an argument for calling it the "Bornholmsk" variety of Scanian, but Scanian was stripped of its ISO 693-3 language status in 2009.

I see no evidence of an army or a navy, though the Danish armed forces are probably good evidence that the local tongue of Bornholm is not a dialect of Swedish.

It might be better to introduce it as the "Bornholmsk Scandinavian dialect".  Is it true that it has the same orthography as Danish?
Could the interpretation of the locale usefully fall back to standard Danish when there is no usable data for Bornholmsk?

Richard.

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