Variant subtag proposal: H?gnorsk variety of Norwegian

[Leif Halvard Silli]

Doug Ewell, Sat, 2 Jan 2010 18:49:01 -0700:
> Leif Halvard Silli 

<xn dash dash mlform dash iua at xn dash dash mlform  dash iua dot no>

:-)
 
>> I feel that what Richard Ishida's Language Subtag Lookup [1] says 
>> about 'no' is a good argument. That note notes the existence of 
>> precisely such quirks. (And it also serves as a comment to Doug, who 
>> was surprised to hear that one should avoid using 'no' despite its 
>> massive use.)
>> 
>> ]]
>> no is a macrolanguage that encompasses the following more specific 
>> primary language subtags: nb nn . If it doesn't break legacy usage for 
>> your application, you should use one of these more specific language 
>> subtags instead."
>> [[
> 
> People tag content for different reasons.  If your primary goal in 
> tagging a piece of Norwegian content is precision, you will certainly 
> choose "nb" or "nn" instead of "no".  If you are additionally concerned 
> about searchability -- potentially by non-native speakers who may think 
> "Norwegian" is precise enough, using browsers or search engines which 
> may not understand the relationship between the three subtags -- then 
> you may have to think about it.  The same argument applies to "zh" 
> versus "cmn", "yue", "wuu", etc.

One question may then be whether 'zh-yue' is "better" than 'yue'.

> I'm not trying to say that "no" is usually the best choice, only that 
> the situation (as with Chinese) is complex, and dismissing "no" as a 
> political hack or a mistake perpetrated by earlier coding systems misses 
> at least some of the story.

Agreed.

My thinking then is that someone interested in tagging a resource as 
Høgnorsk /may/ have to think about - or simply experience -  the 
results of the choice of the prefix as well. The dilemma between 'nn' 
prefix and 'no' prefix doesn't disappear just because we say that 'nn' 
is the preferred prefix.

>> (Of course, feel free to use 'gem' as prefix if that is the only thing 
>> that saves your day. But then we are far outside the relevant problems 
>> to discuss.)
> 
> I suspect nobody was really recommending "gem-hognorsk" for real use, 
> only using it to make a point.

It seems to me that they were unable to make the point without going 
outside the  macrolanguage concept. And that to me indicates that the 
point is weak, because the macrolanguage situation is constantly 
experienced in real life here. It is not  theoretical. 

To say that 'no' and thus 'Norwegian' is a construction, appears like a 
construction, to a Norwegian.
-- 
leif halvard silli