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Hi!<BR> <BR>
(Did my previous message get lost? Or delayed? Below is the essence again. Hope both messages don't get through at once.)<BR>
<BR>It seems that Wikipedia<BR>(<A href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erzgebirgisch">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erzgebirgisch</A>)<BR> does classify Erzgebirgisch as a Franconian dialect:<BR> <BR>"<STRONG>Erzgebirgisch</STRONG> (or <I>Aarzgebèèrgsch</I>, pronounced <SPAN class=IPA title="Pronunciation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)"><A title=Wikipedia:IPA href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:IPA"><FONT face="Arial Unicode MS">[aːɰtskəpɛːɰjkʂ]</FONT></A></SPAN>) is an <A title="Upper German" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upper_German">Upper German</A> <A title=Dialect href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialect">dialect</A>, probably belonging to the <A title=Franconian href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franconian">Franconian</A> dialect group, spoken mainly in the central <A title=Erzgebirge href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erzgebirge">Erzgebirge</A> (Ore Mountains). It has received relatively little academic attention. Due to the high <A title=Mobility href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobility">mobility</A> of the population and the resulting contact with Upper Saxon, the high <A title=Emigration href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emigration">emigration</A> rate and last, but not least, its low <A title="Mutual intelligibility" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_intelligibility">mutual intelligibility</A> with other dialects, the number of speakers is decreasing."<BR> <BR>
So that's an argument for [vmf] as the prefix.<BR>
<BR>Sorry that I mentioned language genealogy at all! <BR>
<BR>
I really think I agree with Randy that what we should be concerned with doing is creating tags that will help users retrieve pages in languages that are at least comprehensible, when pages in their own languages are not available (that is, will do so when the various filtering algorithms are applied).<BR><BR>
Randy Presuhn <A title="Adding variant subtag 'erzgeb' for Erzgebirgisch (was: Requests	that have been on hold)" href="mailto:ietf-languages@alvestrand.no?Subject=Adding variant subtag 'erzgeb' for Erzgebirgisch (was: Requeststhat have been on hold)&In-Reply-To=">randy_presuhn at mindspring.com </A><BR>Mon Aug 10 19:44:38 CEST 2009 <BR>>There is not a *requirement* for the tags to reflect genealogy.<BR>> Though it *can* be helpful, I think the current state of a language<BR>> and what other language it most closely resembles are more useful<BR>> when we're constructing tags in terms of "X is a variant of Y".<BR><BR><BR>Thus I could support both the prefixes-- [vmf] and [sxu]--if there are two distinct variants of Erzgebirgisch, one closer to the Franconian group and one closer to Upper Saxon.<BR>
<BR>
Another possibility (one that we mentioned before but never really considered too seriously) is to register the subtag with a prefix of [gem] and then add additional prefixes as research makes it clearer which ones we want.<BR>
<BR>
I see no reason to wait so long to get a subtag registered.<BR>
<BR>
Best,<BR>
<BR>
C. E. Whitehead<BR>
<A href="mailto:cewcathar@hotmail.com">cewcathar@hotmail.com</A><BR><BR><BR></body>
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