Generic variant subtags in RFC 3066bis

Caoimhin O Donnaile caoimhin at smo.uhi.ac.uk
Tue Apr 19 13:05:55 CEST 2005


> When the RFC 3066bis registry is up and running, I intend to propose
> some highly generic variant subtags which may be used with many
> languages. Some examples that come to mind are -northern, -southern,
> -eastern, -western, and -central for geographical dialects; -ancient
> and -middle for earlier versions of languages (-old being too short);
> and -highreg, -midreg, and -lowreg for sociolinguistic registers.

Aren't such terms highly specific to each language, subject to the 
conventions of scholarship within that language, and non-orthogonal?

E.g. "Middle Irish" is 900-1200 roughly, whereas "Middle English"
is 1100-1500.  "Clasical Irish" is 1200-1650, whereas "Classical Latin" 
is much earlier(!), and the term "Classical English" is not normally 
used at all.

   http://www.iol.ie/~pemsch/project99/comen7.htm
   http://www.wordorigins.org/histeng.htm

Caoimhín


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