Re: CHAT: Call for help

Danny Wier scripsit:

> Punjabi *might* be official in Pakistan, but I'm not really sure. I think
> it's called Lahnda there, and written in Arabic script rather than Gurmuk=
> hi.
Ethnologue calls the two varieties of Punjabi sufficiently different to
be different languages, but there is certainly a dialect continuum (which
includes Hindi too, actually).

> Well... Persian has three main dialects and each is official in one count=
> ry:
> Farsi in Iran, Dari (Afghani) in Afghanistan, Tajik in Tajikistan. But th=
> ose
> are more often considered separate languages aren't they?
Ethnologue calls them different languages, but agrees that written Farsi and
Dari are hardly distinguishable (lexical differences only).  Tajiki of course
is written in Cyrillic.  I will add Farsi/Afghanistan to the list.

> Tigrinya is spoken in both Eritrea (where it is official) and Ethiopia
> (where it is not official but is still widespread). English and Arabic ar=
> e
> both also co-official in Eritrea, which became independent from Ethiopia =
> in
> 1993.
I will add it.

> You also have the numerous cases of Autonomous Republics in Russia, where
> Russian shares official status with Tatar, Chechen, Bashkir, Chuvash, Yak=
> ut,
> Buryat blah blah blah....
Lacking good information, I will ignore this for now.

--
John Cowan <jcowan@...>     http://www.reutershealth.com
I amar prestar aen, han mathon ne nen,    http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
han mathon ne chae, a han noston ne 'wilith.  --Galadriel, _LOTR:FOTR_