Adding variant subtag 'erzgeb' for Erzgebirgisch

[Randy Presuhn]

Hi -

> From: "CE Whitehead" <cewcathar at hotmail.com>
> To: <ietf-languages at iana.org>
> Sent: Wednesday, August 12, 2009 8:48 AM
> Subject: Adding variant subtag 'erzgeb' for Erzgebirgisch
...
> Obviously however [vmf] and [sxu] both are Germanic languages,
> so a prefix of [gem] would not be inaccurate; it would just not be
> that specific; it would not be fictitious
> {oops; I meant 'specific'} 
> and it would be fine to use it were there no other prefix available.

No, it would be semantically anomalous.  Please read the many posts
of what it means to use a collection code like 'gem' in tagging.

...
> I know nothing about the language and nothing about German;
> from the evidence I saw at Wikipedia and Ethnologue I think I'd favor
> [sxu] but maybe that is an inaccurate prefix; I would prefer that the
> German linguists and speakers hammer this one out.

Looking at non-Wikipedia, non-Ethnologue resources, folks
might be interested in the (lengthy) article published at
http://robertlindsay.wordpress.com/2009/04/13/a-reworking-of-german-language-classification-part-2-middle-german/
(search for Erzgebirgsich for the relevant sections) even
though it references discussion from this list.

For a sample of some Erzgebirgisch text take a look at
http://www.godemann.de/Regionales/Arzgebirg/arzgebirg.html

Randy