Alsatian answer from LOC

[Doug Ewell]

Karen Broome <Karen underscore Broome at spe dot sony dot com> quoted 
her response to Rebecca Guenther:

> How is this different from Schwyzerdütsch or Alemannic or Castilian? 
> All of those are names for the language only in particular dialects. 
> This seems to be inconsistent with the other alternate names found in 
> ISO 639-2.

While I can't speak about "Schwyzerdütsch" or "Alemannic" in this 
regard, this is absolutely true about the name "Castilian."  Residents 
of Spain do use the name "Castilian" to refer to the language "es" in 
general, partly to avoid confusion; but for the other 90% of Spanish 
speakers around the world, "Castilian" specifically refers to es-ES as 
contrasted with es-419, es-US, or es-AnywhereElse.

It would seem that if some speakers of Swiss German use the term 
"Alsatian" to refer to the language in general, while others thinks it 
refers to a regional variation, this would be exactly parallel to 
"Castilian."

--
Doug Ewell  *  Fullerton, California, USA  *  RFC 4645  *  UTN #14
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