Re: [Ietf-languages] Adding prefixes with dialect variants to Occitan orthographic variants

[Doug Ewell <[e-mail]>]

John Cowan wrote:

> From what I understand, the classical orthography is suitable (or
> unsuitable) for any dialect, the Mistralian orthography for Provencal
> only, and the Italian orthography for Aranese only.

The very use case from which this discussion arose was that the individual "was trying to tag Gascon text with Mistralian orthography." He cited the following image as evidence, although the inscription at the bottom of the statue is admittedly a very small, almost trivial, text sample:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:France-002076_-_Our_Lady_of_Lourdes_(15771785681).jpg

> What concerns me now is which order the tags should go in.  The BCP 47
> principle is that tags that create a greater barrier to mutual
> intelligibility should come first.  But I am not sure if it is easier
> to read text in the "wrong" orthography or in the "wrong" dialect from
> what you are most familiar with.  That is a question for an Occitan-
> speaker or a Occitanist.

As neither the Registrar, an Occitan speaker, nor a resident of Occitania, I personally would think of this situation as "language X, dialect Y, written in the Z orthography" and not "language X, written in the Y orthography, dialect Z." I think "dialect" binds more closely to "language" than "orthography" does.

The only precedent we have for this in the LSR is for Resian, for which the orthographic variant '1994' always comes at the end, even when the sub-sub-dialect variants are included (e.g. "sl-rozaj-biske-1994").

As a coding specialist, I would hate to think that the canonical order for such combinations in BCP 47 should have to be decided on a per-language, or even per-dialect or per-orthography, basis.

--
Doug Ewell, CC, ALB | Lakewood, CO, US | ewellic.org