[Ltru] Re: Macrolanguages, countries & orthographies

[CE Whitehead]

Hi, Debbie, Dave S., John C, all,
my comments are below:
>
>David Starner wrote:
>
> > As a user of en, enm and ang, I don't like that one bit. fr
> > and en are more mutually intelligible then ang and en, and I
> > don't see any use in labelling ang as en.
>
>
>Debbie wrote:
>But I see people who are looking for a language subtag to denote Old 
>English
>using English as a starting point in a hierarchical system such as ISO
>639-6; makes sense to me.
>
> > Furthermore, if ang
> > can validly be labeled en, it can also be validly labeled
> > sco, adding another layer of complexity.
>
>I note Ethnologue have classified sco under English!  But you are right, to
>be able to link languages by mutual intelligibility requires a
>multi-parent/child relationship system.   That's not what I am advocating 
>at
>the moment (emphasis on the word moment :-)).
Dave Starter wrote:
>My comment had nothing to do with mutual intelligibility. There is no
>theoretic reason to prioritize English (en) over Scots (sco) as
>including ang and enm. They both descended from enm and ultimately
>ang. Likewise, there's no reason to prioritize modern Dutch over
>Afrikaans as covering Middle Dutch (dum); it is equally valid to
>consider Middle Dutch a historical form of one as the other.

Agreed, it is here a Macro-language that would include Creole languages like
"Tok Pisan" with English, Middle English, Scots, would come in.

But I do see a problem with parent-child relationships;
my point about Old English being Old English or Old Danish was an example
(take a look at the Icelandic sagas;
I know" hwaet!" [ lo! behold!  what!] is the same in both Beowulf and the 
Icelandic sagas; I think "bein" is bone in Old Danish, but "bann" or 
something similar is bone in Beowulf; cannot remember exactly how it's 
spelled now:
http://www.northvegr.org/lore/sweet/008.php

there are other similar problems; John Cowan mentioned a possible 
macrolanguage for Occitan/Provencal which I think some people consider to be 
closely related to Catalan.

--C. E. Whitehead
cewcathar at hotmail.com
>

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