Proposal: Language code "de-DE-trad"

[John Clews]

Given Torsten's useful summary, I think I'd prefer to see dates in
all circumstances, thus

de-DE-1945
de-DE-1996

and so on for Austria and Switzerland.

Otherwise you may well end up with a need for
-pre-trad and
-pre-pre-trad and
-pre-pre-pre-trad tags.

That's not so far fetched as it might sound initially: given the
likelihood of more and more and more historical material on the web
as written cultural heritage becomes mode widely available, something
like

de-DE-1903
de-DE-1915
de-DE-1945
de-DE-1996

could well be useful, and would be far more specific than just
de-DE-trad, and could if necessary be added to by further IANA
registrations that went through the normal IANA registration process.

The same could also be possible for simplified Chinese too, which
again might allow more specificity than just "trad" and "simp."
For example
zh-cn-1962
could be deputed to have just that meaning (probably it's a different
date, but I'm sure that you get my drift).

What pros and cons are there for that?

John

In message <02020923340000.05565@wilson> Torsten Bronger writes:
> On Samstag,  9. Februar 2002 22:25 schrieben Sie:
> > John Clews scripsit:
> > > 1. Are there more than one set of conventions that came in at amy
> > > times previous to 1996, or was it all uniform? It's an open question:
> > > I just have no detailed knowldege of German. However, it may also be
> > > possible that "trad" might need to be broken up into more detail.
> >
> > The last German spelling reform was in 1901, featuring things like
> > "th" > "t" (they had been pronounced the same for centuries, of course)> .
> > So if a distinction must be made, one could use de-??-1901 instead.
> > I suspect that most of the pre-1901 materials represented in
> > digital form are in fact given in 1901 (or 1996) orthography.
> > Nevertheless, these codes are supposed to be useful for
> > non-digital works as well.
> >
> > What I don't know is whether the 1901 reform created any sort
> > of ambiguities.
> 
> I'm a physicist, not a linguist, so I can only sum up and
> translate what the Duden has to say about a Short History of
> German Orthography on its pages
>    http://www.duden.de/schreibung/geschichte/geschichte1.html
>    http://www.duden.de/schreibung/geschichte/geschichte2.html
> 
> Until 19th century -- no uniform orthography
> 
> 1876 -- First try for this fails due to Bismarck's veto.
> 
> 1880 -- Konrad Duden writes his first "Duden", but hitherto
>         it's not normative.
> 
> 1901 -- Second Official Orthography Conference in Berlin.
>         The Duden becomes normative, but it tolerates many
>         ambiguities.
> 
> 1903 -- Many publishers don't like that, so K. Duden writes
>         a special edition for them *without* these ambiguities.
> 
> 1915 -- Special and normal edition are merged and the
>         ambiguities are abolished for good.
> 
> 1945 -- Different editions for East and West Germany.
> 
> 1955 -- The Duden becomes normative in the FRG.  (Don't
>         ask me why this was necessary and came so late. At least
>         this didn't introduce something new.)
> 
> Well, orthography continually evolves, but the reform of 1996 was
> a clear break -- the first of its kind since uniform and
> therefore "tagable" orthography began in Germany at the
> beginning of the last century.
> 
> Therefore I think "-trad" is sensible in this case.  You could 
> call it "-1901", but I'm afraid the rest (pre-1901) is mere chaos,
> rising rapidly back in time and heavily depending on the region
> (Germany was politically real patchwork), making very different 
> approaches necessary anyway.
> 
> As far as neighbour countries are concerned, I only know that
> the German population of Switzerland accepted the Duden as
> normative in 1901.  But basically the Duden defined German
> orthography where German was spoken.  The *reform of 1996*
> was enforced in Germany, Austria and Switzerland equally.
> 
> Bye,
> Torsten Bronger.
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Best regards

John Clews

--
John Clews,
Keytempo Limited (Information Management),
8 Avenue Rd, Harrogate, HG2 7PG
Email: Scripts2@sesame.demon.co.uk
tel: +44 1423 888 432;

Committee Member of ISO/IEC/JTC1/SC22/WG20: Internationalization;
Committee Member of ISO/TC37/SC2/WG1: Language Codes