Variant subtag proposal: Høgnorsk variety of Norwegian

[Thorgeir Holm]

<hermer Michael Everson frå 28.12.2009 10:59>
> On the other hand... 
> 
> What fun... "In 1938, official Nynorsk went through a radical spelling reform. Today, the term Landsmål is used to refer to the pre-1938 versions of Nynorsk."
> 
> So Landsmål is synonymous with Nynorsk from 1929-1938, when new-Nynorsk diverged from it orthographically. 

Fun indeed, if you like riddles. Landsmaal was the name given by Ivar 
Aasen to his codification of Norwegian, and adopted as the official name 
until 1929, when a parliamental vote adopted the names Nynorsk (nn) and 
Bokmål (nb) for former Landsmål and Riksmål, losing with one vote for 
the other proposition, Norsk (Norwegian) and Norsk-Dansk (Norwego-Danish).

The name Nynorsk was in fact a linguistic term: Modern Norwegian, as 
opposed to Old Norse.

The name Høgnorsk, first used by a Scottish traveller some 200 years ago 
to denote the mountain dialects of Norwegian, was applied in the 1920s 
by those who wanted to keep Landsmål/Nynorsk free of "Danish" (nb) 
elements. After this stance was outlawed in 1938, the name was firmly 
attached to the traditional orthography.

There seems to be a pretty analogous case in Belarusian, where the "new" 
spelling from the 1930s was a result of political will to make it more 
like Russian, and the "old" spelling now has its own variant tag.

Thorgeir