I thought the the ISO 639 JAC members might be interested in this comment
that came in through our Web form. We recently balloted Aragonese. I could
write him back to tell him what the documentation was (original request
said they had 200 being registered with the ISBN agency). Does anyone have
any further comments about this?

Rebecca

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sat, 5 Apr 2003 07:43:39 -0500
From: WWW generic account <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Change in ISO 639-2 code

This data was submitted on: Saturday, April 5, 2003 at 07:43:39

lang_in_eng_change = Aragonese
lang_in_fre_change = Aragonais
iso_639_2_b = an
iso_639_2_t = arg
change_requested = Dear Sirs,
I am most surprised to find Aragonese on your list. No Romance linguist anywhere in the world (except, perhaps for some locals enthusiasts) would regard it as a fully-fledged language, but rather as a dialect of Spanish.
I would be grateful therefore to have news of the 50 documents that were put forward to argue that Aragonese is anything other than a dialect.

I am certainly not denying that Aragonese exists, nor that it has a perfect right to be defended and studied. But I find it hard to imagine (tasking English equivalents) Geordie, Cockney, or Liverpudlian appearing on the 639-2 list.

Incidentally, following the same criterion with another language no Romance linguists would question the unity of, you will presumably accept anyone claiming that Balearic", "Majorcan", "Minorcan", "Fragatí", "Tortosan", "Valencian", "Rosellonese", "Eivissan" or any number of other local names for varieties of Catalan, are languages in their own right. Some are quite prolific in producing pseudoscientific papers purporting that this or that language was spoken in the area centuries before the Catalans arrived! In fact, you'll soon run out of three-letler codes!!

submit_name = Miquel Strubell MA MSc
submit_email = [log in to unmask]
submit_status =
Status of submitter:
Speaker of Catalan (now renamed, in Eastern Aragon, as "Eastern Aragonese" by some local anti-Catalan groups, including suspected arsonists; see http://217.136.252.147/webpub/eurolang/pajenn.asp?ID=4172 ).