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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