Subject: Re: [Ietf-languages] Language subtag registration form

From: "Doug Ewell" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 24 Nov 2020 21:47:20 -0700

John Cowan wrote:

> People do, however, belong to more than one social group.  My daughter
> speaks Standard English with me and AAVE with her friends, for
> example, even in the same conversation.  Neither would be appropriate
> for all circumstances.  The same is true of people who command both a
> local Arabic variety and Modern Standard Arabic.  Both of these are
> usually thought of as sociolects.

There's nothing inconsistent about an individual speaking in different
sociolects, certainly not if we allow that an individual can speak more
than one language. I suppose we all use different combinations of these
dimensions, consciously or not, at some point every day in our spoken
and/or written language.

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

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From: Sebastian Drude <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 25 Nov 2020 11:27:19 -0300

Dear all,

I am sorry if I opened a distracting discussion on a minor point 
concerning this application.  As I said, the proposal is fine with me 
(and so far with everybody, it seems).

If the subtag can be neutrally just labelled "variety", that is fine, too.

Still, replying to John: Indeed, I agree, individuals can have more than 
one sociolect depending on their socialization.  Often schools teach a 
socially neutral or educated/cultivated form of the language.
(This is still different from the Archaic Esperanto case, where usage 
does not depend on the social group a speaker belongs to.)

The Arabic case, however, imho. belongs to the space dimension, not the 
social dimension (although there are of course interferences: possibly 
only certain social groups do know the standard arabic variety besides 
the local dialect). A standard variety, such as MSA, is also defined 
with reference to space: it is a variety which is acceptable in all or 
most regions where a language is spoken.

Best, Sebastian

-- 

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