No subject

In addition,
"Originally the territory of what is now Latgale was populated by Eastern Baltic tribes, whose language became the basis for both modern Latgalian and standard Latvian. Many Latgalians still speak the local dialect, which has a standardized written form and is therefore considered a separate language,"
according again to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latgalia

According to www.ethnologue.com ,
the language lv (latvian) is spoken by among others, Latgalians; see:
http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=lav

(I  don't know if this means that they speak Latvian proper, or their language Latgalian is being considered to be Latvian, but I suspect the former and maybe also the latter since Latgalian is classified as an East Latvian dialect--is this the answer to your question??)

To me, since Latgalia n has its own distinct writing system, and its own literature (thus meeting the criteria for a separate language at ethnologue; http://www.ethnologue.com/ethno_docs/introduction.asp#language_id),
I do not see any problem with its getting its own language subtag.
(Though Early Modern French is written differently than Modern French and has its own literature too and it only got a variant subtag--but this is a modern language of course.)


2. Walliser German
I have more questions about Walliser German--which does not seem to be a written language at all (though it may be in use in emails??). 
My feeling is that Walliser German and Walser German are closely related enough that the can be classified together
but I may be wrong 
(although Walliser German is at present neither classified nor mentioned at ethnologue--
it's sometimes classified together with Walser German as a Swiss German dialect; 
however I've seen neither Walser nor Walliser German classified as a subdialect of the other but they are clearly related;
see: http://www.walser-alps.eu/dialect/walliser-german for the classification of these under Swiss German-- 
but Ethnologue has recently decided that these are not Swiss German).  
Once a language tag ([wts] or [wae]--I don't care) is assigned to both,
I'd be happy to see a request for a variant subtag for Walliser German.
This would prevent the Walliser German subtag's being deprecated down the road when a subtag for Walser German is approved--but neither is really written of course.

Best,

C. E. Whitehead
cewcathar at hotmail.com