ON LANGUAGE NAMES /// RE: Results of Duplicate Busters Survey#2//Ainu

CE Whitehead cewcathar at hotmail.com
Thu Sep 11 18:15:10 CEST 2008



Hmm, Gerard Lang brings up a point regarding the regional subtags although I cannot really discuss Ainu and hardly feel qualified to discuss the Arabic varieties (my interests in school were syntax and rhetoric; in phonology I was more interested in language rhythms and supersegmentals).  

In some cases the regional subtags we have may not be sufficient for Arabic; in several of the Arabic varieties Gerard listed there are sufficient regional subtags-- but I do think we need a regional subtag for the "Levant" (Palestinian, Lebanese, Western Jordanian and Syrian Arabic--to my knowledge there is really little difference between Palestinian and Lebanese; I am no expert however but I recall that my Arabic teacher and friends of hers, all Palestinians, tended to front more of their vowels than their neighbors did; for example, they said 'felestiniy' whereas the neighbors say 'falestiniy' I think; they also fronted some u's but did not front a's and u's to quite the extent that native speakers of Hebrew do; the available country subtags thus I think suffice if further distinctions are needed).

We may also need some regional subtags to distinguish the varieties of Iraqi Arabic, and one for the Gulf too (although I think Yemeni Arabic is a bit different from the rest of the Gulf--but am not sure).

In cases where the regional subtags are not appropriate, would an extension be useful?  Or would too many protocols/applications be unable to deal with it?

As I understand it, that is handled by iesg at ietf.org

If more regional subtags are needed, that is not up to ietf-languages of course that I know of.

--C. E. Whitehead
cewcathar at hotmail.com

Lang Gérard gerard.lang at insee.fr
Wed Sep 10 16:24:42 CEST 2008
> Concerning varieties of arabic languages, ISO 639-3 classification is, no doubt, well motivated, but not alone.
> For example, the document "Scriptures of the World", published in 1994 by "United Bible Societies", that seems> to be an important source for Ethnologue, retained:
> -Arabic;
> -Algerian arabic;
> -Chadian arabic;
> -Egyptian arabic;
> -Judaeo-Tunisian arabic;
> -Lebanese arabic;
> -North African arabic;
> -Palestinian arabic;
> -Sudan arabic;
> -Southern Sudan arabic;
> -Tunisian arabic.

> Bien cordialement.

> Gérard LANG


--
Doug Ewell * Thornton, Colorado, USA * RFC 4645 * UTN #14 http://www.ewellic.org


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