Fw: Erzgebirgisch Classification Question

Karen_Broome at spe.sony.com Karen_Broome at spe.sony.com
Mon Mar 24 21:20:35 CET 2008


As promised.... It might be good to hear how Thomas responds to this 
ruling, but here it is. I will resubmit the form with this prefix if 
Thomas still wants to go ahead and register this tag given the Ethnologue 
ruling.

Regards,

Karen Broome


----- Forwarded by Karen Broome/LA/SPE on 03/24/2008 01:20 PM -----

Editor_Ethnologue at sil.org 
Sent by: Paul_Lewis at sil.org
03/24/2008 12:49 PM

To
Karen_Broome at spe.sony.com
cc
Editor_Ethnologue at sil.org, Joan_Spanne at sil.org, petercon at microsoft.com, 
thogol at googlemail.com
Subject
Re: Erzgebirgisch Classification Question







Karen: 

My apologies for this long delay.  I've been waiting for some replies on 
this and they haven't been forthcoming. 

So, I'm going to go out on a limb based on my own sketchy research, and 
propose that Erzegebirgish be considered a dialect of Upper Saxon [sxu] 
(which itself might be considered by many to be a dialect of Standard 
German [deu]). 

As you are well aware, the distinction between language and dialect is 
somewhat arbitrary and often highly emotionally charged, but here's my 
reasoning: 

(1) Ethnologue only mentions Erzegebirgisch as a dialect of Standard 
German in the entry for Standard German in the Czech Republic. It isn't 
listed under the main entry for German in Germany (in fact, we list no 
dialects there - fearing to tread on that fairly volatile topic).  As you 
point out, our data for the Czech Republic is very likely quite dated. 

(2) Other references I've found to Upper Saxon mention it being spoken in 
the Erzegebire region (as well as elsewhere), and that there is a 
distinctive variety associated with that particular region. 

It makes sense, then, that Erzegebirgisch is more likely to be a variety 
of Upper Saxon based purely on this fairly circumstantial evidence. A more 
thorough review of the comparative Germanic literature is needed and 
desirable - but probably not within our range of possibilities within any 
reasonable time frame. 

I'll see that the Ethnologue records get modified to reflect this 
"interpretation".  I hope this also provides you with enough data to move 
forward on providing the IANA tag. 

If any of those copied have objections or additional information it would 
be greatly appreciated. 

WIth regards, 

Paul 
Ethnologue Editor
7500 W. Camp Wisdom Rd.
Dallas, TX 75236
Tel: (972) 708-7432 / Fax (972) 708-7380
www.ethnologue.com 


Karen_Broome at spe.sony.com 
03/18/2008 05:30 PM 


To
Editor_Ethnologue at sil.org 
cc
Paul_Lewis at sil.org, thogol at googlemail.com, Joan_Spanne at sil.org, 
petercon at microsoft.com 
Subject
Re: Erzgebirgisch Classification Question








Paul,

We're still hoping for an answer to this question so that we can assign a 
tag. Has there been any progress?

Regards,

Karen Broome
Metadata Systems Designer
Sony Pictures Entertainment
310.244.4384






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