From: Philippe Verdy (verdy_p@wanadoo.fr)
Date: Wed Aug 24 2005 - 11:40:56 CDT
I see that ISO 639-3 lists the following variants for French:
* Standard (modern) French
[fra;fra;fr;I;L] French
* Historical variants of standard French [fra] (there's no clear
delimitation):
[frm;frm;;I;H] French, Middle (ca.1400-1600)
[fro;fro;;I;H] French, Old (842-Ca.1400)
* Variants of standard French in French overseas where standard French is
also official:
[gcf;;;I;L] Guadeloupean Creole French
[gcr;;;I;L] Guianese Creole French
[rcf;;;I;L] Réunion Creole French
Isn't there also a variant for Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon (near from the
Canadian variant)?
But where is then the Martinican Creole French, is it considered the same as
Guadeloupean?
What about the creole variants spoken in Mayotte (and the Comores)?
What about the creole variant spoken in Madagascar (a past French colony)?
* Does this refer to the creole created by mixing modern French into
Occitan, or is it considered instead a variant of Occitan (post 1500)
[oci;oci;oc;M;L]?
[frp;;;I;L] Franco-Provençal
* Modern variants with long separate histories in North America:
[frc;;;I;L] French, Cajun (this should be the variant spoken in North and
Mid-West of US, or in the Maine)
[lou;;;I;L] Louisiana Creole French (this should be the the variant spoken
in Southern US, but most Canadians sites think that this southern French is
"Cajun", and give the name "Acadian" to the Northern variant)
But where is the standard Canadian variant (spoken in Quebec and Ontario)? I
don't think it can be named "Cajun" [frc].
Shouldn't the Saint-Pierre variant be listed near Canadian French?
* Exotic creoles that I did not know:
[acf;;;I;L] Saint Lucian Creole French
[crs;;;I;L] Seselwa Creole French
[kmv;;;I;L] Karipúna Creole French
[scf;;;I;L] San Miguel Creole French
But then, there are other unencoded creoles or variants of French, in past
French colonies, for example in Vanuatu, the former New Hebrides that became
independant in 1977 if I remember well).
And more interesting are those variants (that are difficult to understand by
French natives):
- in Vietnam
- in India (Pondichery)
- in Russia (there's a small but living community of French-speaking people
coming there at various epochs, the last ones being just after WW2, invited
by the Communist Party, before they were rapidly deported by Staline, and
the new French-speaking community of Russian exiled people that fled the
Russian revolution and that came back to Russia since the end of USSR, and
which is developing its own creole as well)
- and of course the many creoles in Africa!
Hmmm... Classification of languages is definitely a difficult task. It can
be refined, but then there's the need to create more "collective" language
codes, and augment the meta-data currently defined in ISO 639-3 (so that the
database will contain groups and subgroups as well (possibly in relation
with ISO 639-1/2 groups, or better using the Ethnologue classification of
families)
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