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ISOJAC  November 2002

ISOJAC November 2002

Subject:

Re: Written forms: should they get ISO 639-2 codes? (And Kalmyk / Oirat)

From:

Håvard Hjulstad <[log in to unmask]>

Reply-To:

[log in to unmask]

Date:

Tue, 12 Nov 2002 12:01:34 +0100

Content-Type:

text/plain

Parts/Attachments:

Parts/Attachments

text/plain (206 lines)

I don't think we disagree a lot at all, John. My Kurdish example may have
been a poor example; I don't know enough about the linguistic details.

Indeed, religion, culture, and alphabet/writing system are very often
different sides of the same thing, or at least very closely related. We need
to be very sensitive to this.

All this has to do with the question of "counting languages" -- "How large
is a language?". And that is in essence what we are asked to do as a JAC. We
do not have clear (enough) criteria. I see that as a big problem. If we can
clarify the criteria a bit, that would be of great benefit to our work. We
very much need an operational definition of "individual language".

I think that at least the following factors need to play a role:

(1) Objective linguistic factors : Obviously important.

(2) Alphabet, writing system : Does probably not play a role in itself, but
still is a factor since it reflects cultural connections, etc.

(3) Orthographic stability : This is actually a fairly important factor when
it comes to "counting languages". Examples: The fact that the two forms of
Norwegian (Bokmål and Nynorsk) have stable orthographies, makes it obvious
that you can "count" two forms. The Sami languages have (now) stable
orthographies, and the counting is fairly straight-forward. These
orthographies specify more than the principles of rendering the language in
writing; details about each single word are specified. One implication of
that is that dialectal variations are usually not at all, or to a very small
degree (e.g. as to choice of words, but not the forms of the words), visible
in the written language. Many languages have a "looser" orthography. In
those cases even the written forms (partly) reflect the continuous variation
of language. In those cases the "counting" of written languages is (almost)
as difficult as "counting" spoken languages. If two "languages" are very
closely related by linguistic criteria, but have different orthographies (in
the same or different scripts), then that is an argument for assigning
"individual language" identifiers.

(4) Cultural and religuous groupings and feeling : Very important, and very
difficult. Linguistic descriptions frequently are of little help. But the
credibility and usefulness of the work we are doing very much depends on
good decisions in this respect.

(5) Political issues : The "red lines on the map" to play a role. And the
role may be different depending of the nature of the political border.
Especially vocabulary may be greatly influenced by "random" borders through
"one" language community.

At this time I am just tossing this out, hoping to arouse some discussion.
At a later time (but not much later) a "project team" (or something) needs
to look closely at the issue and come up with operational guidelines.

Best regards,
Håvard

-------------------------
Håvard Hjulstad    mailto:[log in to unmask]
  Solfallsveien 31
  NO-1430  Ås, Norway
  tel: +47 64963684  &  +47 64944233
  mob: +47 90145563
  http://www.hjulstad.com/havard/
-------------------------

-----Original Message-----
From: ISO 639 Joint Advisory Committee [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf
Of John Clews
Sent: 11. november 2002 17:28
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Written forms: should they get ISO 639-2 codes? (And Kalmyk
/ Oirat)


Hello Håvard

Just some clarification from me on your reply: we are basically in
strong agreement about the principles, though the detail applied to
individual languages needs to be sorted out somewhat.

This information is based on my experience of cataloguing books from
Turkey, the Caucasus, Central Asia and Western China, in the late
1990s, as well as considerable work during the 1980s in this area,
leading up to my being chair of ISO/TC46/SC2 (Conversion of Written
Languages) before I resigned from that position.

In message  <[log in to unmask]>
[log in to unmask] writes, re: Written forms: should they get
ISO 639-2 codes? (And Kalmyk / Oirat), inter alia:

> I don't think that the case of Hindi vs Urdu is primarily a
> question of writing system. More important is the fact that
> religious, cultural and political issues have made considerable
> impact on the linguistic development in the two groups.

In fact religious, cultural and political issues _are_ usually the
reason why most of these and other languages have adopted the
specific writing system that they have.

More important in relation to Hindi and Urdu is also the fact that
speakers of Hindi and Urdu think of them as distinct languages, and
there are distinct lexical differences in the modern versions of
these, despite their emergence from a (mainly) common language, known
in the 19th and early 20th century as Hindustani.

> I believe that the situation e.g. for Kurdish is quite different:
> that is (to my belief) one language with three writing systems (and
> dialectal variation, I am sure).

No: I feel that you're quite wrong here. The situation is that there
are essentially Kurdish _languages_ - each different, rather like the
Sami _languages_. The terrain in what the Kurds prefer to call
Kurdistan is very mountainous, and large distances and the various
tribal rivalries mean that there is a large degree of mutual
incomprehensibility between the different speaker groups.

The Kurdish languages are each more different than are the Sami
languages.

Like each of the Sami languages, there are also dialects of each
Kurdish language.

The various PKK and KDP internal wars (and the predecessors of these
wars, and (who knows) the successors of these wars) reflect tribal
and geographical and linguistic differences in relation to who was
fighting who. Of the larger groups, Sorani Kurdish, usually written
in Arabic script on the one hand, and other Kurdish
dialects/languages like Zaza, usually written in Latin script on the
other hand, will be the main varieties that people are likely to come
across.

Some of the Kurdish languages will also shade into, and be affected
by, other Indo-European languages in the region at large.

You'll help nobody much by insisting on a single Kurdish language,
any more than you would for he various Sami languages.

The groups that you are likely to come across are as follows:

1. KURDI (SORANI) [KDB], mainly in Iraq, mainly written in Arabic script.

2. KURMANJI (NORTHERN KURDISH) [KUR],
   KIRMANJKI [QKV]
   DIMLI [ZZZ] - most of the above in Turkey, mainly written in Latin
   script, though not exclusively.

In addition, Zaza is regarded as a separate language from Kurdish by
some people, while others use that name as a synonym for DIMLI [ZZZ],
and others as a synonym for KIRMANJKI [QKV].

The situation isn't helped by the fact that some language names which
use cognates of Kurdish are also used for various Aramaic languages
in the region too.

In passing, Kurdish written in Cyrillic is likely to be historic
rather than having a growing user population. An Azerbaijani contact
of mine told me that most Kurds in the former USSR lived in Armenia,
and he also told me that following the war between Azerbaijan and
Armenia, many Kurds, and muslims in general, were encouraged to leave
Armenia. They may therefore form part of the population of 1,000,000
or more refugees in Azerbaijan.

> The question of Kalmyk: Do Oirat speakers in China and Kalmyk
> speakers in Russia consider themselves as speaking the same language?
> (They might not be able to read eachother's writing, but that isn't
> the main issue.) How different are the two (or more) spoken forms in
> "objective linguistic terms"? Is there a "one-group feeling" among
> the people(s)?

I don't think so at all. My impression is that these are different
groups, just who have had the same language names attached by
linguists from much further west in Europe. I remember seeing an
article from Turkey to that effect, a couple of years ago.

In any case, whatever differences there have been in the past will
have been considerably heightened by all these decades of separate
development in two, sometimes hostile, countries. For most purposes,
it's generally the Kalmyk language in the USSR that is usually
refered to by Kalmyk-Oirat, and not any language in China.

Therefore different language names should be used for the language(s)
in China, though nothing much emerges in Oirat from China.

Much of this confused situation for the languages in the former USSR
is made worse by the historical hangover from Stalin's days: before
taking over after Lenin's death in the USSR, he was also responsible
for minority affairs in the USSR, and had a considerable (usually
adverse) direct influence on the development of different languages,
particularly the written forms, and probably also on naming and
grouping of languages too (cf. the Karachay-Balkar situation recently
discussed) both through his own interventions and also through the
experts appointed to oversee the detail of various language-reform
activities during the 1930s in particular.

Best regards

John Clews

--
John Clews,
Keytempo Limited (Information Management),
8 Avenue Rd, Harrogate, HG2 7PG
Email: [log in to unmask]
tel: +44 1423 888 432;

Committee Member of ISO/IEC/JTC1/SC22/WG20: Internationalization;
Committee Member of ISO/TC37/SC2/WG1: Language Codes

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