Principles of Operation (was LANGUAGE SUBTAG REQUEST FORM Erzgebirgisch)

[CE Whitehead]

Hi, all, I agree with Kent too; ethnologue is not gospel.And am sure you probably all remember that T. Goldammer said in a previous email that he did not like the prefix sxu in any case (because there are two dialects which perhaps are differentially comprehensible to speakers of sxu ??  or because the classification of Middle German languages needs work ?  http://www.ethnologue.com/14/show_family.asp?subid=778 )(It's Franconian according to Wikipedia; see:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erzgebirgisch ; but Goldammer sees it as Upper German ?? together with Alemannic) I'd like to hear what T. Goldammer says about all this, of course, but he's waiting this out, I guess. Thanks very much, in any case. --C. E. Whiteheadcewcathar at hotmail.com* * *  Frank Ellerman wrote 2008/1/24 > why should the same> dialect switch its "language" depending on old> pre-WWII political borders. I could understand> that the northern Harz colony founded 400 years> ago in some way switched from "sxu" to "de" (or> in theory to "nds", but not reallyGood question; I do not know why this switch in language group/family either; but of course a dialect might vary slightly as a result of political borders and affiliations, incorporating different vocabulary in it; also some linguists do classify slightly differently than others from time to time (for a while there was an effort to classify Japanese as Austronesian, but that's died off; Japanese has not changed but linguists have changed their minds).Karen Broome wrote 2008/1/23: > Doug, > Are you aware that Ethnologue currently has this dialect listed under both "deu" and "sxu"? There may be a > regional distinction here. > Regards, > Karen (deu is used at Ethnologue for Erzgebirgisch as spoken in the Czech Republic, as you've all noted) Thomas Goldammer wrote 2008/1/22:> > > ...> > >> > > > it looks as if "sxu" might be a more appropriate prefix than "de".> > >> > Dear all,> > sxu is not quite appropriate. sxu is clearly Middle German whereas> Erzgebirgisch belongs to the Upper German group (one can easily show> this due to many common developments and shared retentions in> phonology, morphology and lexicon).> I know, there was this mistake in Ethnologue 14 where Erzgebirgisch> was listed as a dialect of sxu, but that was corrected in Ethnologue> 15. I live now in an sxu speaking area (Osterlaendisch variety), and> most people here claim that they can't understand Erzgebirgisch (which> surprised me a little bit, but I grew up in an sxu/erzgeb contact zone> and thus learned both dialects). They might understand Eastern> Erzgebirgisch better, due to the massive influence of sxu on this> variety, but the people consider the Western variety as "purer", and> most authors write in the western variety (ok, this might be because> it has quite more speakers).> Until extensive linguistic work has been done to fully classify all> these German varieties, dialects and dialect continuums, I would> prefer to get all these "unclassified" dialects tagged with "de".> That's probably the one, one can't make mistakes with.> > Best regards,> Thomas.> > > -- > Thomas Goldammer, M.A.> Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology> - Department of Linguistics -> Deutscher Platz 6> D-04103 Leipzig> Germany> > Tel.: (0049) (341) 3550-309> Mail (off.): thomas_goldammer at eva.mpg.de> Mail (priv.): thogol at googlemail.com> -------------------------------------------------> _______________________________________________> Ietf-languages mailing list> Ietf-languages at alvestrand.no> http://www.alvestrand.no/mailman/listinfo/ietf-languages
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