Re: [Ietf-languages] Fwd: Proposal for variant language subtags for German dialects

[Doug Ewell <[e-mail]>]

John Cowan wrote:

> Varieties that are not separated from Standard German by mutually
> unintelligibility should have the kind of tags you have used, although
> I recommend using "deu" as a prefix rather than the obsolescent "ger".

The correct BCP 47 language subtag for Standard German is 'de', not 'deu' or 'ger'. 

The Language Subtag Registry uses two-letter ISO 639-1 code elements as its basis for language subtags whenever they are available, and uses three-letter code elements from 639-2, 639-3, and 639-5 otherwise.

All tags and subtags used as prefixes should be taken only from the Registry, not directly from the core standards.

Lisa got this right in her proposals, although, as others have said, some of these may actually be varieties of Low German (nds) or Swiss German (gsw) rather than Standard German (de).

I’m still waiting for the Reviewer to offer an opinion on these. Thirty-four is a lot of varieties and it isn’t completely clear to me whether the underlying goal is to document the varieties (which is not what BCP 47 language tags are for) or to actually tag resources by language where "de" and "gsw" and "nds" are not fine enough.

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