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

[Hugh Paterson III <[e-mail]>]

John,

Can you help clarify how many sub levels are presumed in these sub-tags.
For example, if we say that we assign a tag to ‘New England English’ does
that preclude creating a tag for ‘New York’ and/or ‘Boston’ Englishes? If
New York Englanish has a tag does that preclude a Manhattan English? If
English is the language name and there is hierarchy in the geographical
units does that create an assumption that the speech varieties are also
hierarchical in their designation too? Or is it all flat and exclusive
within the context of the sub-language level?

Written varieties which have been debated in this forum (such as the German
orthography) generally have dates associated giving them a time depth with
dates usually based on implementation dates.  In contrast oral records and
oral realities “on the ground” do not change with discrete dates. For
example, New York English “on the ground” doesn’t generally sound like
Bernie Sanders or Christopher Walken.  That is they represent
Brooklyn/queens New York English they represent a certain time depth and
social class which may have been dominant at one point for the speech they
represent. However, Even the same social class and racial backgrounds don’t
sound the same today with younger generations. How do we model time depth
for archival oral materials via sub tags?


All the best,
-Hugh

Sent from my iPhone


On Tue, Sep 12, 2023 at 6:57 PM John Cowan <[e-mail]> wrote:

>
>
> On Tue, Sep 12, 2023 at 11:51 AM Hugh Paterson III <[e-mail]>
> wrote:
>
> IWith regard to the gsw code I would like to point out the following:
>> [gsw] comes to ISO 639-3 via ISO 639-2, where it's scope of coverage is
>> defined as including all of allamanic, which would include varieties spoken
>> in the older district of Baden or the western edge of the current state
>> Baden-Württemberg.
>>
>
> That settles that, then.
>
>  Therefore my first objection is  the proposal detailed enough here? or
>> why stop at the proposed level of detail?
>>
>
> In general we add variant subtags only on request: we don't try to add
> more than were asked for.  Per contra, we also try to make sure that the
> requested tags represent realities on the ground.
>
> My second objection/concern is how do we codify dialects at scale? For
>> example, The Dan language spoken in Cote d'Ivoire and Liberia has no less
>> than 40 dialects. So are each of those Dan dialects game for codification
>> here?
>>
>
> In principle, yes (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Yerevan_jokes).
>