Valencian Language Tag registration request

[Doug Ewell]

(Re-sent for the benefit of Web-archive readers; the line starting with 
"From" apparently boggled the Web archiver's mind)

Victor <vmbenet at gmail dot com> wrote:

 ... but the main argument could be that the name "Catalan" in the
 Valencian region may cause rejection to some users and big conflicts
 between regions and users.

Have you seen the entry for this language in the Language Subtag
Registry?

Type: language
Subtag: ca
Description: Catalan
Description: Valencian
Added: 2005-10-16
Suppress-Script: Latn

Both names, "Catalan" and "Valencian," are provided and have equal
standing in the Registry.  The fact that "Catalan" is listed before
"Valencian" does not imply that one name is preferred over the other,
either in the Registry or in the underlying ISO 639 standard.  The same
is true for "Spanish" and "Castilian," for "Dutch" and "Flemish," and
for "Romanian" and "Moldavian" and "Moldovan."

 From RFC 4646, Section 3.1:  "The 'Description' field is used for
identification purposes and SHOULD NOT be taken to represent the actual
native name of the language or variation or to be in any particular
language.  Most descriptions are taken directly from source standards
such as ISO 639 or ISO 3166."

By "rejection," do you imply that users of language tags (most of whom
will not even see the actual subtag) will invent their own subtag in
violation of BCP 47?

 Another main reason to request the tag is law. Valencian is recogniced
 as the language spoken in the Valencian region at its own law, at the
 Spanish national law and of course, at the European law which all
 consider it to be a language by itself.

The laws you cited use the name "Valencian" to refer to this language.
That isn't the same as declaring Valencian to be a separate language
from Catalan.  To make this claim about law, you should be able to cite
a specific passage that states that Valencian and Catalan are two
separate languages which are NOT mutually intelligible.

--
Doug Ewell  *  Thornton, Colorado, USA  *  RFC 4645  *  UTN #14
http://www.ewellic.org
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