How to represent Dgèrnésiais and Jèrriais (was: Re: LANGUAGE SUBTAG MODIFICATION - GB)

[Doug Ewell]

Lee Gillam <L dot Gillam at surrey dot ac dot uk> wrote:

> Resources like Wikipedia, that become commonly used, set the next 
> precedents for how people do things. People looking for supporting 
> information from other sources might look here: 
> http://www.loc.gov/marc/languages/lang_a2b.html or here 
> http://www.itsmarc.com/crs/lang0146.htm#norman_french and see that the 
> information given in Wikipedia seems to be good.

These two resources do show "roa" being used for "Norman-French," which 
the two languages in question certainly are.

> Not all users, unfortunately, have such easy 24/7 desktop access to a 
> John Cowan.

I was going to make a humorous remark spinning off "24/7", but Lee's 
point is well taken.  Not all users know how to get onto this list and 
Ask the Experts, nor should they need to.  They should have enough 
publicly available information to make an informed decision on their 
own.

>> I guess further discussion may be warranted on how best to tag the 
>> flavors of Norman French used in the Channel Islands.
>
> .... though current ways and best ways may differ. I guess the 
> question would be how to deprecate use of either fr-GB or roa for 
> these.

You know where this is really headed, right?  Perhaps an effort needs to 
begin to get code elements assigned for Dgèrnésiais and Jèrriais, or 
generally for "Norman French," in some part of ISO 639.  (I'll bet there 
are 50 documents in 5 places already.)  Or, failing that on 
philosophical grounds -- John said ISO/DIS 639-3 considers them all 
dialects of French -- maybe we should consider registering them 
ourselves.  I know this latter approach is "discouraged" (Section 2.2.1, 
item 5) and I merely throw it out here for discussion.

--
Doug Ewell
Fullerton, California, USA
http://users.adelphia.net/~dewell/