[Foundation-l] [Fwd: Sardininan - Sassarese languages or language and dialect?]

[GerardM]

Hoi,
When you want to know what languages are recognised for the Netherlands
check out Ethnologue.. What is recognised by ISO as a language has a big
emphasis on existing languages. You should not use the ratified versions of
the ISO-639 as a basis for such an understanding.

As to Belarus, this is a completely different story. What we call be-x-old
would not be accepted as a new project by the language committee. It has
been accepted as a different orthography by IANA. The Limba Sarda Comune is
a newly created language that is made up of two Sardinian languages. It is
unlikely that it will be recognised by IANA because it will first need
recognition by ISO.

It is exactly to prevent these kinds of essentially POV and political
discussions that we are happy to associate what we accept with what is
understood to be of an universal quality. We are also happy to include as a
member of our committee someone who has experience with applying for
language codes both for the IANA and ISO. The Wikimedia Foundation has in
Debbie Garside a member of the Wikimedia Foundation's advisory board who is
the head of research for ISO-639-6. The point being that we do get advised
on the positions that we take.
Thanks,
     GerardM

http://www.ethnologue.com/show_country.asp?name=NL

On 9/11/07, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> 2007/9/11, Sabine Cretella <sabine_cretella at yahoo.it>:
>
> > a) a language without an army
> > b) a way of expressing orally that developed out of a language and that
> > has some differences , for example in pronunciation, some expressions
> > etc, even having the same basics when it comes to grammar (just to
> > mention one example)
> >
> > So could
> >
> >     Campidanese (ISO 639-3: sro)
> >
> >     Gallurese (ISO 639-3: sdn)
> >
> >     Logudorese (ISO 639-3: src)
> >
> >     Sassarese (ISO 639-3: sdc)
> >
> > be dialects of the Common Sardinian Language? Well ... only from a
> > logical POV this is not possible, because they were there long before
> > the Common Sardinian Language was created ...
>
> I disagree with that form of reasoning. When looking at my own Dutch,
> it was created in the 17th century based on existing dialects
> (basically, Dutch can be defined as the language the
> [[Statenvertaling]] was written in), but those dialects are considered
> dialects of Dutch nowadays (there are some dialects that are
> considered separate languages in Wikipedia, but the languages that
> most influenced the official language are the Holland and Brabant
> dialects, which are not). The question should be whether the 4
> languages and the newly created official version are close enough to
> be considered dialects of a single language. If that is the case, then
> there's only one official form of the language, and using that is not
> a strange thing to do.
>
> > In any case the code "sc" stands for the macro language Sardinian and
> > not for the Limba Sarda Comune, so there is no reason why it should have
> > the right to claim that code for the language.
>
> Just compare this with the Belarus situation: I don't think anyone is
> disagreeing that be: and be-x-old: are two versions (whether different
> orthographies, different dialects or something else) of the same
> language. And it seems clear to me that that single language is
> Belarusian. So be: is the language that includes both versions, and
> following your reasoning there is no reason why be: should have the
> right to claim that code for its language.
>
> There is no hard line between two dialects of the same language and
> two different, related languages. As such, I don't have any trouble
> with considering the same lingual entity at the same time a variation
> of Sardinian and a language in its own right. We can be hierarchical
> in that. And if there is a single formalized version for a language,
> giving that version the code for the language as a whole seems like a
> logical thing to do.
>
> --
> Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
> ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels
>
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