[OSM-talk] Local language help

Jo winfixit at gmail.com
Thu May 10 15:43:01 UTC 2018


Marc,

I probably shouldn't have mentioned Switzerland. I thought it was "nicely"
divided into clear language regions, but apparently not. My only experience
with it was that in the part neighboring Germany they spoke something that
resembled German somewhat, but once we passed the Sankth-Gottard pass,
everyone spoke Italian (and hardly any German).

In Belgium, at least, it's completely defined in what language official
signs should be written in, in each of the regions.

In most parts of the world, I think this is not the case, which makes it
hard to set this default_language tag, without mentioning all the
'possible' ones. I guess the best we can achieve is cover the majority and
then use name:language for the exceptions?

Jo

2018-05-10 11:35 GMT+02:00 Marc Gemis <marc.gemis at gmail.com>:

> Don't you think that Belgians like Jo and the rest of the Belgian
> community know best what the default language is in a certain area ?
> This can be a pretty sensitive topic, which is not always easy to
> understand by outsiders. So please let the Belgian community decide
> the default language without pointing us to our constitution.
>
>
> regards
>
> m. (from Belgium)
>
>
> p.s. Besides those areas you mention we also have Municipalities with
> facilities [1]
>
>
> [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Municipalities_with_language_facilities
>
> On Thu, May 10, 2018 at 10:43 AM, Oleksiy Muzalyev
> <oleksiy.muzalyev at bluewin.ch> wrote:
> > On 09.05.18 07:46, Jo wrote:
> >>
> >> The whole country has 3 official languages. In the north nl is the
> >> official language, in the south fr. And a small area in the east is de.
> >> Brussels is officially bilingual. Hence all names there will be a
> >> combination of fr - nl.
> >>
> >> Normally I would expect Belgium to not have default_language set. You
> may
> >> have to keep a list of countries where it only makes sense to look at
> the
> >> next smaller geographic regions.
> >>
> >> I expect the same goes for Switzerland (whole country 3-4 official
> >> languages, but at the next geographic level it is clear which language
> is
> >> spoken/official for which region).
> >>
> >> I think in most multilingual countries the regions are not so clearly
> >> defined.
> >>
> >> Jo
> >
> >
> > Hello Jo and Yuri,
> >
> > Here is the text of the article 4 of the Belgian constitution [1]
> >
> > "Article 4
> > Belgium comprises four linguistic regions: the Dutch-speaking region, the
> > French-
> > speaking region, the bilingual region of Brussels-Capital and the
> > German-speaking region.
> > Each municipality of the Kingdom forms part of one of these linguistic
> > regions."
> >
> > In the Swiss constitution [2] it is stated directly that there are four
> > national languages. It is also the article 4:
> >
> > "Art. 4 National languages
> > The National Languages are German, French, Italian, and Romansh."
> >
> > It is not a light question, - which language is the default one for these
> > countries. In my opinion, following these official texts is the best
> > solution.
> >
> > [1]
> > https://www.dekamer.be/kvvcr/pdf_sections/publications/
> constitution/GrondwetUK.pdf
> > [2]
> > https://www.admin.ch/opc/en/classified-compilation/
> 19995395/index.html#a4
> >
> > Best regards,
> > Oleksiy
> >
> >
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>
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