Re: A code for standard Zhuang

On Tue, Apr 03, 2018 at 02:04:57AM +0000, David Starner wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 2, 2018 at 8:25 AM Doug Ewell <[email protected]> wrote:
>> 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."

  There’s nothing in that statement to contradict the notion that
Standard Zhuang, as a whole, is a standard form of Yongbei Zhuang [zyb].
In fact, if anything, it reinforces that notion: why else consider the
situation of a native speaker of Yongbei Zhuang taking the Standard
Zhuang language test?  A native English speaker who only relies on their
mother tongue ability, has a vocabulary limited to everyday needs, and
has not learnt to spell consistently, would most likely fail a language
test in English in like manner.

> 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.

  Yes, I’m also wondering whether using just [za] wouldn’t be both more
sensible and better serve the community.  That’s what most other
Wikipedias do, after all: [zh] for Chinese, not [cmn]; [ar] for Arabic,
not [arb], [pt] for Portuguese, not [pt-br] and [pt-pt], etc.  An
unfortunate exception to that is the coexistence of separate Wikipedias
in Serbian [sr], Croatian [hr], Serbocroatian [sh], and Bosnian [bs].

	Best,

		Arthur

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