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

[Sebastian Drude <[e-mail]>]

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]> *On Behalf Of 
> *Mark Davis ??
> *Sent:* Sunday, December 6, 2020 3:07 PM
> *To:* Michael Everson <[e-mail]>
> *Cc:* ietflang IETF Languages Discussion <[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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