Registration forms for description changes

Debbie Garside debbie at ictmarketing.co.uk
Mon Jun 12 00:20:42 CEST 2006


Kent wrote:

> > I would say that a rough interpretation of "book language" 
> in English 
> > would be "literary language".
> >
> > Perhaps it would be good if you could translate "bokmål".
 
> I would be rather interested in that too. 

We shall await an "expert" response Kent !

Debbie
 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ietf-languages-bounces at alvestrand.no 
> [mailto:ietf-languages-bounces at alvestrand.no] On Behalf Of 
> Kent Karlsson
> Sent: 11 June 2006 22:56
> To: ietf-languages at iana.org
> Subject: RE: Registration forms for description changes
> 
> > > "Bok" means "book" and "mål" means "language", and "bokmål"
> > > does not mean "book language" (whatever that might be)
> >
> > I would say that a rough interpretation of "book language" 
> in English 
> > would be "literary language".
> >
> > Perhaps it would be good if you could translate "bokmål".
> 
> I would be rather interested in that too. The explanation 
> I've gotten is that (Norwegian) "bokmål" is the "Norwegian 
> language as used in books" (all at the time, "most" these 
> days; of course there are now books in nynorsk), often 
> spelled the very similarly to Danish. Nynorsk is "new" in a 
> way somehwat similar to that New York is "new" York. And that 
> nynorsk is basically an artificial language synthesised 
> (hence "new") from a number of traditional Norwegian dialects 
> (hence Norwegian), and thus in a sense "older"
> than bokmål. It was created by Ivar Aasen. But maybe I got it 
> all wrong. I would be interested in exactly how.
> 
> I'm just waiting for the mail that tells me that Côte 
> d'Ivoire cannot be called Ivory Cost, nor, of course, 
> Elfenbenskusten (as it is called in Swedish). Or that 
> Timor-Leste cannot be translated to East Timor, nor, of 
> course Östtimor (as it is called in Swedish).
> Or that Nya Zeeland (New Zealand) cannot be called that for 
> some reason.
> 
> Indeed, referring to "svenska" as "Swedish" in English is of 
> course wrong. And Ancient Greek I'm sure has a Greek name 
> (perhaps not an Ancient Greek name, as it would then be 
> referred to as just Greek (in Greek)) that cannot be translated...
> 
> We're getting a bit off-topic.
> 
> I'd be happy to leave the registry as it is on these points, 
> rather than introducing a number of (other) incorrectnesses 
> (which I've already commented on). I hope CLDR/English is not 
> too tighly bound to the "Description" fields in the language 
> subtag registry.
> 
> 	/kent k
> 
> 
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