Add Likely Subtags first step

[Philip Newton]

On 25 January 2015 at 18:51, John Cowan <cowan at mercury.ccil.org> wrote:
> Mark Davis ☕️ scripsit:
>
>> I have a slight preference for "oxford", which just looks cleaner. The
>> Prefix would be en anyway, which would disambiguate.
>
> How would "en-(gb-)oxford" differentiate between 'OED orthography' and
> 'variety spoken in the city of Oxford'?

In exactly the same way, surely, as ‘en-(gb-)scotland’ differentiates
between ‘Scottish Standard English’ and ‘variety spoken in the country
of Scotland’: by the fact that the subtag was registered with the
former meaning.

Similarly with ‘de-(de-)1996’, which cannot mean ‘German as spoken in
1996, or as written in that year in any orthography’, because that is
not what the variant subtag was registered as meaning. And
‘uz-baku1926’ cannot mean ‘Uzbek as spoken in Baku in 1926’, nor can
‘ja-Latn-hepburn’ mean ‘variety of Japanese written in the Latin
alphabet in Hepburn, Iowa’.

There is presently no subtag registered meaning ‘variety spoken in the
city of Oxford’; if such a variety were later registered, it would
have to take a different form if ‘oxford’ were first registered as
meaning ‘OED orthography’.

(I imagine this to be unlikely, as I doubt that Oxford speech is
sufficiently distinct to warrant its own variant subtag.)

Cheers,
Philip