Re: Working on a locale to allow the use of ijekavian variant?
Well, from my point of view, Serbian language is spoken both in Serbia and in Republika Srpska (which is a part of Bosnia nad Herzegovina, its one of the two main entities). The only difference between them is that in Serbia we have "ekavian" variant of Serbian language, and on the other hand, here in Republika Srpska, we use "ijekavian" variant of the Serbian language. But the language we use, the grammar we use, and every other language characteristic is the *same*. There is even a rule, from which by following it correctly you can convert the "ekavian" serbian word to "ijekavian". For example word "млеко" which stands for milk on serbian "ekavian", is converted into "ijekavian" variant "млијеко", "e" is replaced with "ије", because the rule says that the long "e" in "ekavian" should be converted to "ије" in "ijekavian" version.
Just to be clear about differencies. :)
Now, if we name sr_BA@ijekavian, for me that don't make sense, because it would mean that we have just sr_BA version which is incorrect. As I've mentioned, Republika Srpska is the legit entity of BiH, in which Serbian language is spoken, and official letter is cyrillic. On the other hand, in Federation BiH, the official language is Bosnian, with latin as official letter.
So, I think, one way would be to name "ijekavian" variant of Serbian language with cyrillic just sr_BA, since it's clear where it's spoken. And the latin variant should be the sr_BA@latin, which is just the latin variant.
The other way would be to just leave:
sr@ijekavian: Ijekavian variant, Cyrillic
sr@ijekavianlatin: Ijekavian variant, Latin
Because the ijekavian variant of Serbian language is spoken only in Republika Srpska. And it is a *Serbian* language.
I guess we don't have to include the country code? Or we do? In that case, the most correct thing would be sr_BA, 'cause
sr_RS-BA is not looking nice. :)
Maybe I confused everyone with everything :), but that's just mine point of view.
Cheers,
2011/8/13 Christian PERRIER
<bubulle@debian.org>
After our discussions at DC11, we concluded that the best way to
respect the need to have the two different variants of Serbian
language represented would be to use a modifier.
So, the conclusion was:
sr: Ekavian variant, written in Cyrillic
sr@latin: ditto in Latin
sr@ijekavian: Ijekavian variant, Cyrillic
sr@ijekavianlatin: Ijekavian variant, Latin
(I hope I'm now writing "ijekavian" the right way...if I don't, please
accept apologies and correct me, in the hope that it doesn't happen
anymore..:-))
So, that solves a great part of the problem. However, for these
variants to be used, we need locale files to exist so that people can
define them in their environment (this is indeed done by D-I when the
language is chosen-->the appropriate locale is defined in users
environment, from the combination of chosen language and country).
As of now, the glibc has three "Serbian" locales:
cperrier@mykerinos:~$ ls -l /usr/share/i18n/locales/sr*
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4940 2011-08-09 01:03 /usr/share/i18n/locales/sr_ME
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 9856 2011-08-09 01:03 /usr/share/i18n/locales/sr_RS
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 5465 2011-08-09 01:03 /usr/share/i18n/locales/sr_RS@latin
Indeed, from what I see, the sr_ME locale seemsto be ijekavian:
A diff between both files (converted from U+xxxx notation to UTF-8
with the attached script), gives things like:
LC_TIME
-abday "нед";"пон";"уто";"сри";"чет";"пет";"суб"
-day "недјеља";"понедељак";"уторак";"сриједа";"четвртак";"петак";"субота"
+
+abday "нед";"пон";"уто";"сре";"чет";"пет";"суб"
+day "недеља";"понедељак";"уторак";"среда";"четвртак";"петак";"субота"
...which, from my very basic understanding of the language is a good
definition about differences between ekavian and ijekavian.
So, it seems that a good basis for a locale using sr@ijekavian as
language would be sr_ME.
(by the way, it seems that using ijekavian in sr_ME is not a very good
idea...this is indeed the same "trick" I was originally proposing with
"sr_BA" being an ijekavian locale)
If we go this way, now the "only" thing to do is choosing the
"country" part (as, of course, the country-related things like postal
codes, currency, etc. can't be copied from those of Montenegro).
Of course, this might not be as easy as just saying it....as the only
choice we can do is indeed sr_BA@ijakevian (and sr_BA@ijekavianlatin).
Writing the locale is very easy: it requires basic knowledge about
language+country and we can do it easily in a few days here in the list.
But, of course, we first need to be sure about the locale name.
Comments?
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