(Revised) LANGUAGE SUBTAG REGISTRATION FORM

Caoimhin O Donnaile caoimhin at smo.uhi.ac.uk
Sun Aug 26 22:29:52 CEST 2007


On Sun, 26 Aug 2007, John Cowan wrote:

> Indeed.  As things stand (or will shortly stand), the original should
> be tagged "sco", and the revoiced version, "en-scotland".
> 
> Is it necessary in this context to actually register and use a 'glasgow'
> subtag?  In other words, does it actually convey *essential* information?

It depends what we mean by "essential".  If the only need is to
distinguish revoiced/original, then tags sco/en-scotland, or even
sco/en are correct and are fine.

However, "sco-glasgow" conveys a *lot* more information than simply
"sco".  The Glasgow dialect really stands out as pretty unique even in
Scotland.  I was brought up in Ayr, only 50km from Glasgow and where
the Scots dialect is fairly strong, but Glasgow families used to stand
out a mile on the beach in the summer.

As Derrick McClure said:

  "The question whether the urban basilect of Glasgow should be classed
   as Scots has been argued for a long time, of course; but the old 
   notion that it's neither good Scots nor good English and therefore
   beyond the pale was really demolished in principle by Jack Aitken, 
   and the scholarly work on it by Caroline Macafee, Ron MacAulay and 
   others has put that notion out of court.  It IS a form of Scots, and 
   therefore should be designated sco-glasgow as contrasted with 
   sco-buchan, sco-borders and the like."

So you can see that while he is emphatic that Glasgow dialect is "sco", 
he is acknowledging that it is pretty unique.  Some people in Scotland
might get the wrong idea if the film were tagged simply as "sco" rather
than "sco-glasgow".

I would say that it is just a question of whether it is worth going to
the trouble of registering "sco-glasgow" once ISO 639-3 is in place
and "sco" is available.  I guess that it isn't much trouble and that
there isn't likely to be any issue with sco-glasgow, so it probably is
worth it.

Caoimhín


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