LL-L "Taxonomy" 2003.10.08 (04) [E]

[Lowlands-L]

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L O W L A N D S - L * 08.OCT.2003 (04) * ISSN 189-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
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A=Afrikaans Ap=Appalachian B=Brabantish D=Dutch E=English F=Frisian
L=Limburgish LS=Lowlands Saxon (Low German) N=Northumbrian
S=Scots Sh=Shetlandic V=(West)Flemish Z=Zeelandic (Zeêuws)
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From: Sandy Fleming [sandy at scotstext.org]
Subject: "Taxonomy"

Lowlanders,

I've just been looking at MARC database formats for languages at
http://www.loc.gov/marc/languages/

This is the system used by librarians internationally for classifiying books
&c in electronic databases and this part of the documentation formalises
references to languages.

There are different entries for the same language and these are intended to
guide the database entry drone to a consistent labelling of languages. Here
are the entries I've found for Scots (UF means "used for" and USE means
"use"):

Lowland Scots
        USE      Scots

Scots [sco]
        UF       Lallans
                 Lowland Scots

Lallans
        USE      Scots

As you can see, a keyer coming across "Lallans" or "Lowland Scots" is
instructed to use "Scots" in the database field. There's no guidance about
what happens if the language is described as "The Doric" - I'm not sure
whether this matters or not.

Here are the entries for Lowland Saxon:

Low German [nds]
        UF       German, Low
                 Plattdeutsch

Low German, Old (ca. 850-1050)
        USE      Old Saxon

Plattdeutsch
        USE      Low German

Old Low German (ca. 850-1050)
        USE      Old Saxon

Old Saxon
        Assigned collective code [gem]
        (Germanic (Other))
        UF       Low German, Old (ca. 850-1050)
                 Old Low German (ca. 850-1050)
                 Saxon, Old

This seems less satisfactory - not only is there no guidance for a language
given as "Low(land) Saxon", but "Plattdeutsch" is officially to be called
"Low German" in all MARC databases.

Should we be doing anything about this? Can anything be done now that "Low
German" has probably been keyed into library databases all over the
English-speaking world?

Sandy
http://scotstext.org/

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From: Sandy Fleming [sandy at scotstext.org]
Subject: "Taxonomy"

After sending my previous email I discovered this MARC page:
http://www.loc.gov/marc/langchg.html

The second (final) table lists changes to language neames to be included in
the next edition.

So Language names _can_ be changed, but there's no entry to change Lowland
Saxon here.

Sandy
http://scotstext.org/

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