Language tag for Anglo-Saxon?

[Stan Brown]

Is there a lang="..." attribute for Anglo-Saxon (English before the
Normal Conquest)? I tried a language tag search, but the closest I
could come up with was early modern English, 1500-1700. Anglo-Saxon
would be 1100 or earlier.

Does such a language tag exist? If so, where should I have looked to
find it?

--
Stan Brown, Tehachapi, California, USA
https://BrownMath.com/

[Stan Brown]

On Fri, 26 Jan 2024 13:03:16 -0800, Stan Brown wrote:
>
> Is there a lang="..." attribute for Anglo-Saxon (English before the
> Normal Conquest)? I tried a language tag search, but the closest I
> could come up with was early modern English, 1500-1700. Anglo-Saxon
> would be 1100 or earlier.
>
> Does such a language tag exist? If so, where should I have looked to
> find it?

I had a brainstorm to look up infangthief in Wikipedia, and it was
identified with lang="ang". The W3C validator accepts that.

I'd love to know where Wikipedia got that language code, because I
must be using an outdated source, namely
<https://r12a.github.io/app-subtags/>

[Jukka K. Korpela]

Stan Brown wrote:

> I'd love to know where Wikipedia got that language code

Who knows? Anyone can write anything on any Wikipedia pages without
citing any sources.

The defined authority for 3-letter language codes says that “ang” stands
for “English, Old (ca.450-1100)” or (in French) “anglo-saxon”, which is
probably what you are looking for.
https://www.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/php/code_list.php

Declaring some content as being in some language in HTML has generally
no effect on the universe, especially when it is some ancient language.

[Athel Cornish-Bowden]

On 2024-01-26 23:21:51 +0000, Jukka K. Korpela said:

> Stan Brown wrote:
>
>> I'd love to know where Wikipedia got that language code
>
> Who knows? Anyone can write anything on any Wikipedia pages without
> citing any sources.

They're not supposed to, but they do. Sometimes eagle-eyed editors will
tag egregious examples.

> The defined authority for 3-letter language codes says that “ang”
> stands for “English, Old (ca.450-1100)” or (in French) “anglo-saxon”,
> which is probably what you are looking for.
>> https://www.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/php/code_list.php
>
> Declaring some content as being in some language in HTML has generally
> no effect on the universe, especially when it is some ancient language.

--
Athel cb

[Stan Brown]

On Sat, 27 Jan 2024 01:21:51 +0200, Jukka K. Korpela wrote:
>
> Stan Brown wrote:
>
> > I'd love to know where Wikipedia got that language code

> The defined authority for 3-letter language codes says that ?ang? stands
> for ?English, Old (ca.450-1100)? or (in French) ?anglo-saxon?, which is

> probably what you are looking for.
> https://www.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/php/code_list.php

Thanks, Jukka! Sorry I got involved in other stuff and didn't
acknowledge this sooner.

> Declaring some content as being in some language in HTML has generally
> no effect on the universe, especially when it is some ancient language.

The MS-Word spell checker does seem to respond to language codes.
Because I'm so bad at proofreading my own stuff on screen, I try to
force myself to use at least one spell checker.

In this specific case, I don't expect MS-Word to spell check old
English, but at least it won't flag the included words as errors,
probably. (I don't know which list of language codes MS-Word 2010
uses, and what it does if it doesn't recognize a code in HTML.)

[Jukka K. Korpela]

Stan Brown wrote:

> The MS-Word spell checker does seem to respond to language codes.

Yes, if you open an HTML document in Word. I thought I had seen that
happen even when I copied and pasted text from a web browser into Word,
but this apparently is not the case now; formatting gets copied, but not
language information.

> In this specific case, I don't expect MS-Word to spell check old
> English, but at least it won't flag the included words as errors,
> probably. (I don't know which list of language codes MS-Word 2010
> uses, and what it does if it doesn't recognize a code in HTML.)

In “Settings” (or is it “Options”? I don’t remember what it is called in
English version) in Word, the “Language” pane shows the content
languages and proofing tools, and you can manage them there. The set of
languages you can select there is much larger than the set for which
there are proofing tools. It would be surprising to see Anglo-Saxon
supported with proofing tools, and it does not seem to be there even in
the list of available tools.

In my previous tests and in some actual use, I noticed that setting the
language of some text in Word to something that has no proofing tools
available, like Zulu, makes Word skip that text in proofing. Rather
understandable. And I would expect this to happen when you open an HTML
document in Word and it has lang attribute set to a value that refers to
a language for which Word has no proofing tools or that is not at all in
the list of languages recognized by Word.

Yucca

[Arno Welzel]

Stan Brown, 2024-01-26 22:21:

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ISO_639-2_codes>

--
Arno Welzel
https://arnowelzel.de

[Stan Brown]

That looks similar to the one at the Library of
Congress that Jukka posted a few days ago:

<https://www.loc.gov/standards/iso639-
2/php/code_list.php>

[Jukka K. Korpela]

Stan Brown wrote:

> On Wed, 14 Feb 2024 14:00:20 +0100, Arno Welzel wrote:

– –

>> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ISO_639-2_codes>
>
> That looks similar to the one at the Library of
> Congress that Jukka posted a few days ago:
>
> <https://www.loc.gov/standards/iso639-
> 2/php/code_list.php>

The Library of Congress is the designated authority for maintaining the
list of ISO 693-2 codes. There is no reason to consult or cite secondary
sources, especially things like wiki pages; nobody is responsible for
them, anyone can change them at will, and there is no maintenance or
verification procedure.

Jukka

[Stan Brown]

That's my feeling too. I did bookmark Arno's wiki link, just in case
the Library of Congress stops its support and the Internet Archive
doesn't have a backup. Unlikely, I know, but stranger things have
happened.

[Arno Welzel]

Jukka K. Korpela, 2024-02-14 17:26:

They link to the sources as well - see "References" there:

<https://www.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/>