| Verdy_p added a comment. |
Actually ISO 639 also references The Ethnologue entry that lists:
Andorra and France https://www.ethnologue.com/map/ADFR
Ireland and United Kingdom https://www.ethnologue.com/map/IEGB
The Normand variants on the continent are effectively those in region
Normandie, but there are historic Norman people also in Andorra and
elsewhere in the British isles.
For French variants mostly those in Normandie, there's a legacy (but
incorrect) assumption that it is a variant of French. It's true that it is
one of the Oil languages from which French was created ininitially in the
Val de Loire region, where the initial kingdom of France was located, then
later to Île de France when the kingdom was established in Paris (later in
Versailles): the language of the rulers were stil lthe Oil variant from the
Loire valley, but French was in fact normalized and became the official
language of the kingdom only after the creation of the French Academy, that
proposed to unify various oil languages in a new lingua franca, as well as
several Oc languages (Occitan, Catalan, Provençal). Old French is another
history, it was in fact not the result of this merge, but just the historic
vernacular Oil variant spoken in the Loire Valley, which was still distinct
from the Parisian Oil variant. The Parisian Oil variant survived for long
even after normative French was created (and it is still distinct from the
various modern "Parisian French" argots which are found in popular Paris
suburbs, made with more terms from foreign origins, notably from Berber and
Arabic, mixed with more terms from English, but also from other "Parisian
French" spoken by regional community in Paris, notably from some past
corporations occupying people from Southern France, notably from Auvergne:
this "Parisian French" is in fact of variant of Auvergnat, and more related
to Provençal and Oc languages).
Now in Andorra (and in surrounding areas in the French Pyrénées mountains),
that Norman variant is inherited from the former occupation of Southwestern
France by Englo-Normans, i.e. the British Crown hold by the Normans since
their invasion of Britain (and later Ireland). Some minor Norman dialects
can be found as well all around the Mediterranean sea, and up to the Baltic
sea when Normans were ruling the seas.: you can find extinct Norman
variants in Sicilia, Sardinia, and on the Italian peninsula, or in Malta
and Greece and some harbors in North Africa. The Norman troups ceased to
exist as such when Normans lost all their territories in France. But the
vernacular Norman has still persisted in France, and developed
independantly of the Channel Islands. English itself incorporates many
Norman terms, historically more than those borrowed later from French
(which appeared much later and is a real language only since the 19th
century, and became standard only after World War I when French people from
various regions were largely mixed together and used a lingua franca, and
enforced with the mandatory techning of "standard French" in schools since
Jules Ferry).
The regional Norman language is now being renewed in Normandy, but with no
state support (it is culturally supported only by regions in Normandie,
created serparately just after WW2, incorporated separately only in the
early 1980's, but reunified only in 2015). There's no doubt it is
completely related to the Norman languages in Jersey and Guernsey (which
also have cultural "embassies" in France, in Normandie, and with active
cultural cooperation with the two Normandie regions (merged into a single
one in 2015). There are "pan-Norman" cultural events that occur every year
alternatively in Jersey, Guernsey and in French Normandie (but there is
also some association with Norman cultural minorities in Northern Spain and
Italy). There's still an ongoing effort to create a dictionnary for Norman
in French Normandie (jsut like there's another one in Guernsey: that work
is almost complete in Jersey where it is now recognized officially with
English and even with today's French, due to the many relations that the
Anglo-Norman islands share with Normandie and Bretagne regions in France
and the fact that there's now a significant French community living in
those islands, even if they don't speak the French-Norman regional
"dialects" or one of the Channel Islands Norman variants)
For now ISO 639 considered all regional Oil languages to be "French" even
if they were not standard : they are in fact sufficiently different to be
distinguished. French people will easily say you that Norman "'dialects"
are difficult to understand, just like other Oil regional languages : some
of them are encoded in ISO 639 (notably Picard and Walloon), some are not
like Gallo (spoken in Eastern Britanny and recognized officially by the
Bretagne region and Ille-et-Vilaine), or Poitevin/Maraichin, Angevin,
Champenois... The problem being that France itself does not recognize any
other language than standard French and offers no help to support regional
languages in schools and adminsitration: this support is only offered at
cultural levels in regions and smaller collectivities, and in some regional
universities in their linguistic departments.
So yes it is not clear if "nrf" represents the continental variants used in
France. But anyway "nrf" is now widely used also for France and there's no
problem of ambiguity for the use standardized in Jersey and Guernsey. If
there's such a problem, a sistinction is stiull possible with "nrf-FR". For
now the various dialectal variants of continental Norman in France are not
encoded, just like those in Andorra, or elsewhere in the British isles, or
extinct minorities elsewhere in Europe, North Africa, or even in North
America (I was told that Canadian French and Cajun in US are still
containing a "large" Norman substrate, but they are now encoded separately.
Canadian French is corectly represented in BCP 47 as "fr-CA" using region
codes, but the same can be made for distinguishing Norman in Jersey,
Guernsey, and Normandie in France using the same country codes as region
subtags: this is generally sufficient, but "fr-x-norman" "suggested" by old
BCP 47 when ISO 639-3 still did not exist, is probably wrong: "nrf-FR" is
much better.
So let's also go with "nrf-JE" and "nrf-GG" which are equally valid and may
be used when one wants a ditinction; if there are terms kept locally in
other regions, notably in the toponymy, we could as well have "nrf-CA",
"nrf-US", "nrf-IT", "nrf-GR", "nrf-MT", "nrf-SV", all perfectly valid in
BCP 47...).
Note: this discussion is not about adding new wikis for Norman: the
existing "nrm" wikis just need to be renamed "nrf" and we're done: the
existing Wikipedia and Wiktionnary wikis in Norman are already mixing all
the variants. But nothing prevents them to use subtags when needed in some
sections for language tagging of the content or categories, even if they
are all in the same "nrm" -> "nrf" wiki. And for wikidata, proper language
identification should allow any valid and standard BCP47 tag, without being
limited to those that have a wiki edition in Wikimedia or those that
currently have a supported translation for Mediawiki or other softwares
supported by translatewiki.net:
Even if Wikimedia rejects it for its own wikis, MediaWiki itself will need
to be more liberal when people will want to create their own wikis they'll
support themselves, but will still want to have accurate translations.
Immediately we need to rename "nrm" to "nrf" to allow any other software to
be created locally for the Narom language, even if there's still no wiki
supported by Wikimedia for Narom. We should not block that last language
from getting the basic support it deserves. Even if Wikimedia refuses to do
it for now, "translatewiki.net" may add it at any time and will need to
rename "nrm" to "nrf" in its own database (Wikimedia will need to adapt its
source for its own bad "nrm" wikis).
Cc: Verdy_p, gerritbot, Amire80, Nikki, jhsoby, GerardM, Baba_Tabita, Aklapper, Esc3300, GoranSMilovanovic, Adik2382, Th3d3v1ls, Ramalepe, Liugev6, QZanden, Lewizho99, Maathavan, Izno, Wikidata-bugs, aude, Mbch331
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