Language Tag Registration Form - sw-sheng
Doug Ewell
doug at ewellic.org
Mon Sep 27 03:50:19 CEST 2010
Just playing devil's advocate for a minute, it seems that one could
replace "Kiswahili" and "Sheng" with "Standard English" and
"African-American Vernacular English" in the text below, and note that
AAVE is considered a dialect.
--
Doug Ewell | Thornton, Colorado, USA | http://www.ewellic.org
RFC 5645, 4645, UTN #14 | ietf-languages @ is dot gd slash 2kf0s
----- Original Message -----
From: Denis Gikunda
To: CE Whitehead
Cc: ietf-languages at iana.org ; doug at ewellic.org
Sent: Sunday, September 26, 2010 19:11
Subject: Re: Language Tag Registration Form - sw-sheng
However, here are some reactions to Peter's Criteria:
a) The lexical differences inherent in Sheng are functional (speakers
use different terms to exclude older/traditional demographic and reflect
their young, hip, in-the-know culture). Often new terms will be
'mainstreamed' by usage in politics, radio etc and later will become
intelligible to Kiswahili and English speakers. [However most other
terms in lexicon are are Kiswahili or English origin, implying a one-way
intelligibility.]
b) Secondly, it is well known that Kiswahili purists currently frown
upon the effect sheng is having on teaching of Kiswahili. The creep of
colloquial sheng terms and grammar into Kiswahili literature, for
example, suggests that delineation is needed in order to move from
academic grumbling towards policy enforcement.
c) Shared literature: There is not much since Sheng is predominantly
oral and orthographies have not yet been standardized or studied
in-depth.
Based on a) and b) it may make sense to distinguish the two languages
via ISO 639-3.
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