Variant tags for sl-rozaj: standardized Resian

[han.steenwijk at unipd.it]

Peter Constable petercon at microsoft.com wrote:

> Just to make sure we're clear on expectations: IMO, IETF language tags
should support distinctions relevant to a reasonably broad community of
users, not fine distinctions that linguists may want to track. I'm not
saying the minor dialects you have in mind would run afoul of that
guideline, but I think we need to be careful.


Michael Everson everson at evertype.com wrote:

> How many tags?


What kind of users do you have in mind? Speakers, authors, taggers or even
applications? For extinct languages, it cannot be speakers. For those,
authors may have produced documents that need tagging. This is then, in my
opinion, the criterion. There exists a "reasonable" amount of material in
a certain linguistic variety that should be adequately tagged, so that
this material can be processed.

And what are fine distinctions? Differences in phonetics, phonology,
morphology, syntax or the lexicon? Personally I find differences in
phonology important enough, whereas non-linguists tend to stress
differences on the levels of phonetics and the lexicon.

Out of the five (this is your answer, Michael) minor dialects I have in
mind, two of them do well on all accounts: Lipovaz and Uccea. There is
enough material to be tagged and processed and the differences cover
various levels of linguistic description. Among these dialects, the latter
is by now virtually extinct, while the former is being used by a
contemporary and very prolific author (Bible translation, dictionary).

The term "minor" indicates the number of speakers and the fact that these
dialects developed out of the major dialects. This also holds for the
remaining three minor dialects, Prato, Crisacis and Coritis. For these,
little or no documentation exists, so you would have to take my word for
it that these dialects are a linguistic reality. I intended to request
subtags for them as well, just to cover the whole linguistic area.

Han



--
Prof. Han Steenwijk
Cattedra di Lingua e Letteratura Slovena
Universita' di Padova
Dipartimento di Lingue e Letterature Anglo-Germaniche e Slave
Sezione di Slavistica
Via Beldomandi, 1
I-35139 Padova

tel. 049 8278669
fax. 049 8278679