[Ietf-languages] Sark and Sercquiais, and Norman French

[Doug Ewell <[e-mail]>]

There is about half a day left in the review period to add the Sark region subtag and to add Sercquiais to the ‘nrf’ language subtag.

I noticed that, although the ISO 639-3 code element [nrf] lists only the dialects Guernésiais and Jèrriais — because that is what was requested of ISO 639-3/RA in 2014 — “Norman French” per se is an active language in Normandy, with approximately 20,000 speakers (Wikipedia, after Ethnologue). That’s about ten times as many speakers as the Channel Islands dialects combined.

Frances Gillis-Webber and Sabine Tittel wrote in their paper, “A Framework for Shared Agreement of Language Tags beyond ISO 639” (2020):

> For the majority of French regional varieties, ISO 639 codes are
> not available, exceptions being ISO 639-3 ‘nrf’ for the Norman
> dialect[16], ‘pcd’ for Picard, and ‘wln’ for Walloon.
>
> [16] Falsely described as «Guernésiais, Jèrriais» which excludes
> the continental area.

While Gillis-Webber and Tittel promote some serious and damaging misunderstandings about BCP 47, in this paper and others that build on it — which I will cover in a future post — I believe they have a point in this case. The existing code element [xno] is for Anglo-Norman, which is not quite Norman French, but either a dialect of it or a separate language altogether.

Expanding ‘nrf’ in the Registry, by adding a Description field, to cover the parent language Norman French seems outside the authority of BCP 47, much more so than adding Sercquiais. At some point I may propose this update to ISO 639-3/RA instead. But I bring it up here in case others on the list feel otherwise, and believe it should be added to the current Sercquiais proposal.

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