Re: Registration requests: akuapem, asante

Don Osborn wrote:

> There is a unified orthography for Akan. What does that mean when,
> say, Twi Asante, Twi Akuapem, and Fante (which from all descriptions
> are mutually intelligible) are written in it? One might refer simply
> to writing Akan (ak)? Or would new subtags for the unified orthography
> in question reference it under tw or fat?

Well, again, it really comes down to current practice. If there is no 
current practice to speak of -- if Twi and Fanti and unified-orthography 
Akan aren't being tagged at present, or if tagging is all over the 
place -- then we are in a position to encourage a best practice. A 
reasonable solution might be:

ak - for unified-orthography Akan¹
tw-akuapem - for Akuapem Twi
tw-asante - for Asante² Twi
fat - for Fanti²

¹ if it really is distinct from Twi and Fanti per se
² pick your favorite spelling

If there *is* an existing practice for tagging these languages (without 
the Twi-disambiguation variants, of course), then we ought to honor that 
and apply the new variants to the subtag(s) that is/are currently used 
for Twi. But again, someone needs to speak up and offer some evidence of 
the existing practice, or else we have no way of knowing.

> This is why, in addition to clearer documentation on usage (for
> instance on Wikipedia), involvement of experts in the language(s) in
> question would be helpful. Not intending that as a criticism, but an
> observation.

Yes, this is always something to strive for when proposing a subtag, 
especially variant subtags for a living language with 9 million speakers 
(WP).

--
Doug Ewell | Thornton, CO, US | ewellic.org