Re: A code for standard Zhuang

On Mon, Apr 2, 2018 at 8:25 AM Doug Ewell <[email protected]> wrote:

> David Starner wrote:
>
> > Wikipedia currently implies there is a problem, by giving the ISO
> > 639-3 tag of mis to Standard Zhuang,
>
> The Wikipedia article on "Zhuang languages" says:
>
> "Standard Zhuang is based on the northern Zhuang dialect of Wuming."
>
> which, just by itself, without any additional research such as you and
> John have considered, implies that Standard Zhuang should be coded
> 'zyb', including on the "Standard Zhuang" page.
>

However, Johnkn63 at Wikimedia says "There is a world of difference between
Standard Zhuang and zyb, Standard Zhuang simply uses zyb phonemes, the
vocabulary and spelling are not based on zyb. Anyone taking the Standard
Zhuang language test and answering the questions in zyb would fail, for
that matter a zyb person who had not studied Standard Zhuang would not be
able to understand many of the questions."


> Assigning a separate ISO 639 code element to Standard Zhuang might cause
> issues similar to the assignment of separate code elements for Tagalog
> and Filipino. While Filipino is called an "enriched and developed"
> version of Tagalog, many people see the two names as equivalent, or at
> best, see Filipino as a standardized dialect of Tagalog, and regard the
> assignment of two different language code elements as confusing.
>

I think an Arabic-like model might be more likely; "za" continues to be the
usual tag for Standard Zhuang, and Standard Zhuang is Zhuang to most
people, with the individual dialects being of little respect.

_______________________________________________
Ietf-languages mailing list
[email protected]
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf-languages