Generic variant subtags in RFC 3066bis
Caoimhin O Donnaile
caoimhin at smo.uhi.ac.uk
Tue Apr 19 13:05:55 CEST 2005
> When the RFC 3066bis registry is up and running, I intend to propose
> some highly generic variant subtags which may be used with many
> languages. Some examples that come to mind are -northern, -southern,
> -eastern, -western, and -central for geographical dialects; -ancient
> and -middle for earlier versions of languages (-old being too short);
> and -highreg, -midreg, and -lowreg for sociolinguistic registers.
Aren't such terms highly specific to each language, subject to the
conventions of scholarship within that language, and non-orthogonal?
E.g. "Middle Irish" is 900-1200 roughly, whereas "Middle English"
is 1100-1500. "Clasical Irish" is 1200-1650, whereas "Classical Latin"
is much earlier(!), and the term "Classical English" is not normally
used at all.
http://www.iol.ie/~pemsch/project99/comen7.htm
http://www.wordorigins.org/histeng.htm
Caoimhín
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