[Ietf-languages] adjectival usage of variant subtags

[Mark Davis ☕️ <[e-mail]>]

Switching subject since this is not about "BCP 47 extension structure for
ISO TR 21636..."

Mark


On Sun, Nov 29, 2020 at 3:53 PM Doug Ewell <[e-mail]> wrote:

> Peter Constable wrote:
>
> > Observation: In the case of "eastern" and "western", their meaning
> > depends on what it is the qualify. ('East' relative to what?...) But
> > in the case of "fonipa", there is a unique meaning that's independent
> > of what it is qualifying.
>
> Exactly. Mark had stated that the restriction against this type of
> generic variant "doesn't apply when there isn't a prefix," but that's
> sort of circular; we couldn't have registered 'eastern' and 'western'
> for Armenian or any other language simply by omitting the Prefix field.
>
> --
> Doug Ewell, CC, ALB | Thornton, CO, US | ewellic.org
>
>
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.