Scottish English (was: LANGUAGE SUBTAG REGISTRATION FORM)

[Caoimhin O Donnaile]

> >A remaining matter is whether we should, by setting the Prefix field
> >appropriately, encourage people to use en-uk-scotland rather than simply
> >en-scotland.
> 
> en-GB-scotland.

Sounds like a bad idea to me.

The tags en-GB and en-US exist primarily for the _written_ language,
because of orthographic differences.

Whereas "Scottish Standard English" is defined mainly by differences
in pronunciation, for the spoken language.  As Derrick McClure says:

  "It refers to the international English language as spoken in 
   Scotland: distinguishable from other forms of English, first and
   most obviously by accent, but also to some extent by vocabulary, 
   grammar and idiom."

If you had a transcript of Scottish Standard English you could be
reading for a long time before you realised that it was Scottish.
You'd be on the lookout for givaways such as "I'm not" instead of
"I amn't", use of "wee" meaning "little", absence of English idioms
such as "to and fro".  Whereas if it was spoken you would know within
two words that it was Scottish.

>From the spoken language point of view, Derrick says:

  "there certainly is no "British type" which would subsume all 
   Scottish, English, Irish and Welsh accents (from which it
   follows that "en-UK" is simply erroneous, though I'm sure it's 
   commonly used)"

(He is getting mixed up with en-GB, and forgetting that it is needed
to indicate spelling differences, but his point is clear)

Caoimhín