Montenegrin

[Doug Ewell]

Milos Rancic <millosh at gmail dot com> wrote:

> In relation to the written language, there are no national differences 
> between variants of Serbian language...
>
> At the *spoken* level, there are dialect differences, but written 
> language is always the same.

ISO 639 code elements and BCP 47 language tags can be used for language 
that is spoken, written, or communicated by any other means.

So far I am hearing:

* The language is the same, at all but dialectical levels.
* The literature is identified as belonging to a single language.
* Some Montenegrins identify their language as "Serbian," others 
identify it as "Montenegrin," an issue easily resolved by adding a 
second description.
* Even a Serbian linguist cannot conclusively identify whether a given 
text sample is in Serbian or Montenegrin.

Yet, solely because of the precedent set by coding Serbian and Croatian 
and Bosnian separately, Montenegrin too should be coded separately.  I'm 
really not sure I buy this.

--
Doug Ewell | Thornton, Colorado, USA | http://www.ewellic.org
RFC 5645, 4645, UTN #14 | ietf-languages @ is dot gd slash 2kf0s ­