stq vs. frs

Frank Ellermann nobody at xyzzy.claranet.de
Tue Apr 29 05:41:20 CEST 2008


John Cowan wrote:

 <http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=frs>
> Internal evidence from the Ethnologue (15th edition) shows that
> Saterfrisian 'stq' is intended to be the Frisian variety, whereas
> Eastern Frisian 'frs' is intended to be the Low German variety
> that is now spoken in most of the former Frisian-speaking area.

That doesn't fit for (frs) alternate names
| Ostfriesisch, Saterlandic Frisian, Seeltersk Frisian

And (stq) alternate names
| Saterfriesiesch, Saterländisch, Saterlandic Frisian

That's on the ethnologue site, the 639-3 pages link to it.  The
"s" in "frs" doesn't sound like "eastern".  Where do they store
the "evidence" for a registration ?  Looking into a document it
should be easy to distinguish it, e.g., I won't grok "stq", but
get the drift of any written "nds".

> see http://www.ethnologue.com/show_family.asp?subid=90068 for
> Ethnologue's West Germanic family tree

To some degree that supports it, fry is 639-2 Western Frisian
(also known as fy), fri is 639-3 Western Frisian - for obscure
reasons they don't agree on either "y" or "i" for this, or I'm
trapped in old versions again - and frr is Northern.  

It would be strange to deviate from the Frisian fr? scheme for
"s" in frs, the set fri, frr, frs, fry belongs together.  The
"East Frisian" nds dialect is a dialect.   

Assuming that they'd want a code for it they could pick the fr?
scheme *also* for the nds-variant, but using it *only* for the 
variant, but not for the real Frisian language "stq", would be
extremely confusing, nobody would do this intentionally.

 Frank



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