Re: [Ietf-languages] adjectival usage of variant subtags

[Peter Constable <[e-mail]>]

> If somebody uses such a subtag with a language where there is no agreed "western" variety,…

That’s not a situation I’m concerned about. My concern would be the possibility that “Western X” is meaningful, but means different things to different people.


Peter

From: Sebastian Drude <[e-mail]>
Sent: Tuesday, December 8, 2020 12:57 PM
To: Peter Constable <[e-mail]>; Mark Davis ☕ <[e-mail]>; Michael Everson <[e-mail]>
Cc: ietflang IETF Languages Discussion <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: [Ietf-languages] adjectival usage of variant subtags


I am possibly not knowledgeable enough to have a real valid informed opinion (this evidently has a long history that I am not aware of), but I do not see any problem with having a sub-tag like "western" which has a different interpretation depending on the language subtag or other subtags in the same language tag.

Sure, there are many languages which will not need that subtag, and others who will need different subtags which are only relevant to a small group of languages, and again others, probably the most frequent case, which are only relevant for one specific language (there is no Bavarian dialect in any other language than German).

Still, I do not see why  tags which are "adaptingly" useful for many languages should be ruled out in principle.  If somebody uses such a subtag with a language where there is no agreed "western" variety, it will be cryptical, but so would the combination of English and Bavarian be.

Sebastian



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On 08/12/2020 17:42, Peter Constable wrote:
I think it should be ascertained that there aren’t cases in which “Western [language x]” is used by different communities to mean different language varieties. “Western” is relative—west of _something_---and different people might have different somethings in mind.


Peter

From: Ietf-languages <[e-mail]><mailto:[e-mail]> On Behalf Of Mark Davis ??
Sent: Sunday, December 6, 2020 3:07 PM
To: Michael Everson <[e-mail]><mailto:[e-mail]>
Cc: ietflang IETF Languages Discussion <[e-mail]><mailto:[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: [Ietf-languages] adjectival usage of variant subtags

That's a strawman; one doesn't need to enumerate them.

One can have a simple policy for when it comes time to add a variant that could have general applicability, such as "vestland" (for 'Western Norwegian' = vestlandsk). In such a case, use the corresponding general word "western" instead, and add to the description the example 'no-western = Norwegian Vestlandsk'. Then there is no need to have a special variant for Western Slovak dialects, and innumerable other cases.

Of course, where such a variant is not applicable (eg, there is no dialect of Chickasaw that it would make sense to call 'Western'), there is no purpose to using that variant. But that is no different than other productive uses of language subtags, say, ja-AQ.

Mark


On Fri, Dec 4, 2020 at 7:32 PM Michael Everson <[e-mail]<mailto:[e-mail]>> wrote:
This is why we have preferred specific subtags referring to specific entities, rather than

northern, southern. eastern, western, northeastern, southeastern, northwestern, southwestern, central, peripheral, secret, male, female, hill, valley, plains, mountain, coastal, insular, archaic, old, middle, catholic, protestant… all of this is too vague and there would be scores of additional geographical or social generic tags. It is not wise to try to enumerate these.

Michael

> On 30 Nov 2020, at 00:16, Mark Davis ☕️ <[e-mail]<mailto:[e-mail]>> wrote:
>
> Well, if the registry had {eastern, western, northern, southern, central} variants, then someone could have sv-northern. The meaning would be the customary meaning of 'northern' — a variety spoken in the northern part of the area of the Earth in which that language is typically spoken. It is quite common to distinguish varieties based on general geographical location: look at Kurdish.
>
> For many languages that 'adjective' would not be particularly useful, and like any subtag, should be avoided where it does not mark a useful distinction. For example, for English it would not be particularly useful.
>

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