[OSM-dev] Multilingual Maps Overlays

[M∡rtin Koppenhoefer]

2010/11/3 "Marc Schütz" <schuetzm at gmx.net>:
>> 2010/11/3 Stefan Keller <sfkeller at gmail.com>:

>> You should differentiate between a "dialect" and a real language.
>> While für languages there is name:XX (language code), for dialects you
>> can use loc_name and alike.
>
> No, this is _not_ the purpose of loc_name. In fact, loc_name/name/old_name/official_name... and language tags are completely orthogonal.


this might be true (or not). What is the "purpose" then? IMHO the
purpose is to offer alternative fields for name searches.


> Dialects should be treated exactly like languages


I'm not sure


> (the distinction is artifical anyway from a linguistic point of view)


this is not clear, and by doing a superficial internet research it
seems to me that you are wrong, even though there are a lot of edge
cases.


> : use name:...,old_name:... together with the ISO 639-1/2 code (which, admittedly, don't exist for most dialects).


they don't exist because they are not languages IMHO.


> This probably works for Swiss German but in case of e.g. East Franconian (which doesn't have a language tag) you have to be careful to distinguish between Standard German as spoken in, say, Bayreuth, and East Franconian as spoken in Bayreuth. Thus you cannot simply use de-... for the latter, as it would mean the former.


A lot of the characteristics of dialects (at least in German) derives
from pronounciation. Usually there is no common way to write it (as
you generally write in German (Hochdeutsch)). Do you suggest to
transscribe pronounciation? Your example of East Franconian is about a
dialect IMHO, not about a language.


> See these pages for details:
> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Multilingual_names


this is for languages, not for dialects ;-)
btw.: gsw (Swiss German) of course has it's own code.


> http://www.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/php/code_list.php


dito


Cheers,
Martin