While I am mostly of one mind with Peter,
I am attaching three additional comments that support the request for a
separate code element for Valencian, that do have something to add to the
discussion. These were received just at the deadline, and I did not have
opportunity to get them posted, as I have been traveling.
Also, I have never considered the comment
phase a sort of "vote" in that the side with the most comments
"wins." I think that the posted description of the review process
does not make any promise that the majority opinion will determine the
outcome. Comments are valuable when they add useful data and perspective
to the request, and I take them as such. I received 11 copies of one "form
letter" from supporters of the request (with different institional
affiliations, as far as I can tell), but only read it once (though I responded
to all). All comments whether making cogent arguments or simply expressing
opinions and desires already expressed are received and retained. So it
is up to us to make the determination.
-Joan
The commenter in cm30 is not up to date
on the Occitan situation, but other examples he cites do give some precedent.
Of all the changes, clearly
the split of Valencian from Catalan is the most significant and most controversial.
IMO, we should remain very cautious regarding this proposed change. Clearly,
this is a political issue, and we need to be careful that we not become
engaged in more than we should.
While 22 of the 28 comments
were in support of the change, 13 of them come from members of one institution,
the Polytechnical University of Valencia,. These are teachers of engineering,
mathematics, physics, chemistry… they are providing personal opinions,
not expert linguistic or sociolinguistic analysis. Not that all the comments
against were from people with linguistic or socilinguistic expertise; we
just need to be careful not to be led by sheer numbers alone. What we *don’t*
have is comments from linguistic experts that don’t have an emotional
or political vested interest.
Looking at the comments,
I am strongly swayed by the following:
- The analysis of the
Spanish Supreme Court, which comes out against claims that Valencian is
a distinct language.
- The analysis of l’Acadèmia
Valenciana de la Llengua, cited in the Supreme Court document, which states
that Valencian, Catalan and Balear are one language:
The agreement of the Valencian
Academy of the Language of 9 of February of 2005 is specially significant,
by that it is approved the opinion on the principles and criteria for the
defense of the denomination and the organization of the Valencian. In this
opinion one affirms that own and historical the language of the Valencians,
from the point of view of the philology, is also the one that they share
the Independent Communities of Catalonia and the Balearic Islands and the
Principality of Andorra, and that the different ones you speak of all these
territories constitute a language, a same linguistic system; one also says
that to share a language it does not imply that the Valencians do not have
own signs of identity and characteristics, and that perceive them like
clearly differentiated from those of other towns that use that same language;
and that is a fact that in Spain are two equally legal denominations to
designate this language: Valencian the one of and the one of Catalan.
(Translation courtesy
of WorldLingo.)
If we need a basis to
reject the request while claiming to remain apolitical, we could cite the
Supreme Court document, which appears to reflect a greater degree of analysis
than we could provide, and is the *one* commentary we have received
that appears to evaluate without a priori bias.
There are two arguments
made by those supporting the request that I’d like to comment on:
-
‘To our surprise , what used to be a a historical golden
language (Valenciano) has now become a “dialect”. And what used to be
a dialect ( Barceloni/Catalan) has now become a “language”…’ (Teresa
Puerto Ferre -- #21)
Our position should be
that ISO 639 does *not* claim Valencian is a dialect of or has lower
status than Catalan. Rather, ISO 639 considers “Valencian” and “Catalan”
to be alternate names for one language and codes these names with a common
identifier.
-
“Not possessing an ISO code for the Valencian language puts
hurdles for the execution of major linguistic and IT projects, some of
them already in progress and others to be tackled in the near future.”
(Juli Amadeu Àrias i Burdeos -- #27)
It should be noted that
no specific requirement for a separate identifier for linguistic or IT
projects has been in any way demonstrated. (IMO, we should require such
evidence before accepting this request.) It should further be noted that
in protocols that support IETF Language Tags, the tag “ca-valencia” is
provided to declare content as “Valencian”, as opposed to “Catalan”.