[OSM-talk] Local language help

Oleksiy Muzalyev oleksiy.muzalyev at bluewin.ch
Thu May 10 16:58:04 UTC 2018


On 5/10/2018 5:43 PM, Jo wrote:
> 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
In towns where there are French, German and Italian linguistic 
communities the signs may be written in two (or three) languages 
simultaneously. Here is, for example, photo of the train stationat the 
town of Sierre in the canton Valais: 
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Sierre/Siders_train_station#/media/File:Sierre-Siders_train_station-2.jpg

I've made this photo in December 2016. The name of the town on the sign 
is written as: Sierre/Siders. In French and Italian languages it is 
written the same: Sierre, in German it is: Siders ( 
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siders ).

It is the common practice. Here is, as another example, a photo of some 
supermarkets products, which I just shot: 
https://drive.google.com/open?id=18tIzVjiriyHAlDKnRa8veLHaE8TETbxR . One 
can see that the product title is in three languages: German, French ad 
Italian. And it is not only the title, but also a description, a 
preparation recipe, etc., all are in three languages. It is very 
convenient for someone who studies these languages.

Indeed, Swiss German pronunciation differs from the Standard German 
significantly, but it is written practically the same as the Standard 
German. The language in the northern Belgium is called Flemish. Both 
Dutch and Flemish are part of the Dutch Language Union, they both are 
part of the same language group. But I do not know if there are 
significant differences in writing, i.e in orthography.

Best regards,
Oleksiy



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