A sketch with the best-known Swiss tongue twister

[Mark Davis ☕️ via Unicode]

> In summary you do not object the fact that unqualified "gsw" language code

​Whether I object or not makes no​ difference.

Whether for good or for bad, the gsw code (clearly originally for
German-Swiss from the code letters) has been expanded beyond the borders of
Switzerland. There are also separate codes for Schwäbisch and
Waliserdütsch, so outside of Switzerland 'gsw' mainly extends to Elsassisch
(Alsace, ~0.5M speakers). So gsw-CH works to limit the scope to Switzerland
(~4.5M speakers).

> My opinion is that even the Swiss variants should be preferably named
"Swiss Alemannic" collectively...

That's clearly also not going to happen for the English term. Good luck
with the French equivalent...

Mark

On Fri, Mar 9, 2018 at 3:52 PM, Philippe Verdy <verdy_p at wanadoo.fr> wrote:

> In summary you do not object the fact that unqualified "gsw" language code
> is not (and should not be) named "Swiss German" (as it is only for
> "gsw-CH", not for any other non-Swiss variants of Alemannic).
>
> The addition of "High" is optional, unneeded in fact, as it does not
> remove any ambiguity, in Germany for "de-DE", or in Switzerland for
> "de-CH", or in Italian South Tyrol for "de-IT", or in Austria for "de-AT",
> or even for "Standard German" (de)
>
> Note also that Alsatian itself ("gsw-FR") is considered part of the "High
> German" branch of Germanic languages !
>
> "High German" refers to the group that includes Standard German and its
> national variants ("de", "de-DE", "de-CH", "de-AT", "de-CH", "de-IT") as
> well as the Alemannic group ( "gsw" , "gsw-FR", "gsw-CH"), possibly extended
> (this is discutable) to Schwäbish in Germany and Hungary.
>
> My opinion is that even the Swiss variants should be preferably named
> "Swiss Alemannic" collectively, and not "Swiss German" which causes
> constant confusion between "de-CH" and "gsw-CH".
>
>
> 2018-03-09 15:11 GMT+01:00 Mark Davis ☕️ via Unicode <unicode at unicode.org>
> :
>
>> Yes, the right English names are "Swiss High German" for de-CH, and
>> "Swiss German" for gsw-CH.
>>
>> Mark
>>
>> On Fri, Mar 9, 2018 at 2:40 PM, Tom Gewecke via Unicode <
>> unicode at unicode.org> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> > On Mar 9, 2018, at 5:52 AM, Philippe Verdy via Unicode <
>>> unicode at unicode.org> wrote:
>>> >
>>> > So the "best-known Swiss tongue" is still not so much known, and still
>>> incorrectly referenced (frequently confused with "Swiss German", which is
>>> much like standard High German
>>>
>>> I think Swiss German is in fact the correct English name for the Swiss
>>> dialects, taken from the German Schweizerdeutsch.
>>>
>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_German
>>>
>>
>>
>
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