Changing definition of German (was: Re: ISO 639-3 releases list of 2009 changes)

[Randy Presuhn]

Hi -

> From: "Leif Halvard Silli" <xn--mlform-iua at xn--mlform-iua.no>
> To: "Randy Presuhn" <randy_presuhn at mindspring.com>
> Cc: <ietf-languages at iana.org>
> Sent: Saturday, January 23, 2010 12:25 PM
> Subject: Re: Changing definition of German (was: Re: ISO 639-3 releases list of 2009 changes)
...
> But I wonder: If 'de' means 'Standard German', then could it actually 
> make sense to define a subtag which meant 'dialect of Berlin' and use 
> 'de' as prefix for it? If the variant is not coverd by the 'de' then 
> that doesn't make sense to me. I would almost claim that if 'de' can't 
> _in theory_ become macrolanguage, then it can in theory also not become 
> the preferred prefix of variant tag for a German dialect. (However, it 
> could become the preferred prefix of a variant of Standard German.)

I think it depends on whether all those other Germans (gsw, etc.) actually
"tile the plane" for all the dialects.  Also, there are a lot of cases where it
may be difficult to decide just where to put a dialect.  (Erzgebirgisch,
anyone?)    For example, it's not unusual to encounter multiple
dialects in a single city - the regional dialect(s), Hochdeutsch, and a
"Stadtsprache".  Particularly in the case of the latter, folks will argue
about whether it's a variant of the regional dialect, of Hochdeutsch,
or something else.  Since the data may present a continuum,
the analysis gets messy.  The situation in many ways fits the old
"Wellentheorie" of language development better than the
"Stammbaumtheorie".

Randy