Generic variants and Armenian dialects

Caoimhin O Donnaile caoimhin at smo.uhi.ac.uk
Mon Sep 4 00:38:23 CEST 2006


On the subject of generic variants, one possible candidate cropped
up earlier this year in a discussion (started here and continued
offline) of possible subtags for Scottish and Irish Gaelic. This was 
"tradorth", meaning "traditional orthography" - the established 
orthography before the first modern datable "reform".  The subtag
"tradorth" was actually one of the main candidates which emerged
from our discussion, for both Scottish and Irish Gaelic.  Some
snippets from the discussion might be of interest.  ("Eòghan MacEòghan", 
by the way, is just John Cowan's name in Gaelic for fun.)

I said:

> > I was thinking about Eòghan MacEòghan's idea of trying where possible
> > to adopt a common subtag nomenclature across different languages -e.g
> > "tradorth" and "reformed".  The terms "traditional spelling" and
> > "reformed spelling" are pretty clear and unambiguous as regard
> > Irish Gaelic and Scottish Gaelic.  They might not be for a lot of
> > other languages, though - The language might have had repeated rounds
> > of reforms.  Still, since there is no great hurry with registering
> > subtags for Irish or Scottish Gaelic, maybe we should hold off
> > for at least a few months til we see what other languages are thinking 
> > of doing.  Maybe, once we have settled on some preferred ideas, we 
> > should mention them on the ietf-languages list and ask what any other
> > languages might be thinking of doing.  Maybe someone should collect
> > together ideas from various languages, so that we can all see what kind 
> > of subtags other languages are likely to register, or at least are
> > considering as possibilities.

and John said:

> I agree with all of this.  I didn't actually propose "reformed", though,
> for the reason you give: there are often many reforms.  Still, a reform
> usually has a date (1901 and 1996 for German, e.g.), whereas "tradorth"
> can be defined as "the period before the first reform/systematization".


I think it might be good to somehow set up some kind of area - a Wiki
or a bulletin board with subfora for each language - where different
languages can discuss and record their ideas on a system of subtags
which might suit their needs, and then compare them with other 
languages' developing ideas, all of this prior to formal registration 
requests.

Caoimhín


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