167908 - fy missing from prefs->navigator->languages.

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Core :: Internationalization, defect)

Description

[Kuno Woudt]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.0.0) Gecko/20020623 Debian/1.0.0-0.woody.1
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.0.0) Gecko/20020623 Debian/1.0.0-0.woody.1

"fy Frisian" is missing from the languages list
(edit->preferences->navigator->languages).

frisian is a european language spoken is some parts of the netherlands, mozilla
has no trouble supporting it.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:

Comment 1

[Malcolm Rowe]

Reporter, which countries exactly speak Frisian?

Comment 2

[Malcolm Rowe]

Attachment: Patch to languageNames.properties

This patch updates languageNames.properties to be consistent with the latest
updates to ISO 639-2, and also places the file back into language-code order.

To enable Frisian in the dialog, we will also have to add an entry to
intl/locale/src/language.properties, once we know what country/countries it
should be placed in.

The new file is from ISO 639-2, taken from
1. http://www.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/langcodes.html, plus
2. The addition of the two extra codes (ast, x-kok) which were already in
place, and the renaming of Greek, Modern to Greek (as was already done), plus
3. The re-addition of the following deprecated codes:
   in = Indonesian (deprecated 1989 in favour of id)
   ji = Yiddish (deprecated 1989 in favour of yi)
   sh = Serbo-Croatian (deprecated 2000)
(see http://www.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/codechanges.html)

Changes from our current languageNames.properties:
0. In country-code order.
1. Many spelling/name changes, notably the following names:
   Bhutani -> Dzongkha
   Farsi -> Persian
   Scots Gaelic -> Gaelic
   Cambodian -> Khmer
   Greenlandic -> Kalaallisut
2. Addition of many codes, including Frisian.
3. Javanese changed from jw to jv - a known errata in ISO 639:1988.
4. Removal of:
   sb = Sorbian
   sx = Sutu

I can find no reference to sb or sx ever being valid ISO 639 codes.

Comment 3

[Malcolm Rowe]

For historical interest, the original language list came from Communicator 4.x, 
see bug 32477.

Roy, could you review the patch as it stands?  It won't fix the reported bug 
until the reporter provides the countries we should attach the language to, but 
I see no reason not to update our language list in any case.

It does look like there may be contention about some of these changes (eg, 
Gallegan/Gallician, see bug 127946 comment 7).  This isn't something I was 
expecting when I posted the patch - cc'ing momoi for input.

Comment 4

[Malcolm Rowe]

-> me, really

Comment 5

[Malcolm Rowe]

Received by email:

From Jo Hermans <[e-mail]>

Frysian is spoken in North Holland, around the town of Groningen, near the
German border. It's an official language there, with schools and everything, and
it has the same status as Dutch. It exists also in parts of Northern-Germany,
near the Dutch border, but without much governement support (just some primary
schools).

The language was originally spoken in a large area along the coast, roughly from
Amsterdam over Germany to the Danish border. But it has slowly disapeared (apart
from the official support in 1 Dutch province), and most people think it's now a
Dutch dialect, albeit with a very strange pronounciation. But it's really a
separate language (and I'm Belgian, so I don't understand it at all :-) A little
bit like Luxemburgian (sp ?), from which most people think it's a German dialect.

===

As Frisian appears only to be spoken in a couple of places (with presumably no
major changes in dialect), we only need to add the language by itself to
language.properties - we don't need to include any dialects.  Patch coming up.

Comment 6

[Malcolm Rowe]

Attachment: Patch to language.properties

This patch makes Frisian available to pick as a language in the Accept
Languages dialog.  It depends upon the previous patch to actually add the
language, of course.

Comment 7

[Malcolm Rowe]

Attachment: Revised patch to language.properties

Eh, what am I saying?  Groningen has a population of 175,000.

We don't need to add Frisian to the dialog, just make it an acceptable
language.

Comment 8

[Jo Hermans]

I just want to add (in case a Frisian people ever read this and are insulted),
that Frisian and Luxemburgian are really separate languages. Not dialects at all
(for a foreigner, Frysian sounds more like Danish than Dutch), because they have
different vocabulary, grammar, pronouncatiation, etc ... They even use a few
characters that are not be found in Dutch, like the ê (ê)

According to http://members.aol.com/minoritas/writtenn.htm , there are about
600.000 Frisian speakers. All of them know Dutch too, because you have to learn
the 2 at school. But I haven't seen any webpages that accept the "fy" language,
just a few texts that are written in Frisian itself.

PS : I'm myself in a similar situation, since my own language is Flemish, but
has the lang-string "nl-be" (Dutch-in-Belgium). Grrrrr ... a bit of an insult
for me, but I can understand it. Flemish isn not a separate language officially,
 it's a collection of regional dialects, spoken in Flanders. I can agree with
that. And I haven't seen any "nl-be" pages on the web either, just "nl".

Comment 9

[Malcolm Rowe]

Waiting on intl for reviews/comments.

Comment 10

[Kuno Woudt]

As for websites which accept the "fy" language code:

Google used to detect it properly, however this is now broken because
google.com is redirected to google.nl for me. (and google.nl seems to
default to dutch always). 

Other then that the only site I know of which uses it properly is one
which I am involved in myself. Not all of the site is translated to 
frisian, but try this link for a part which is: 

http://www.digiskar.nl/joure.html

Comment 11

[Malcolm Rowe]

-> default (I don't have the time or motivation to fight this through).

Comment 12

[Simon Montagu :smontagu]

I've split the first patch off into bug 178491, since it covers a lot more than
the original issue.

Comment 13

[Simon Montagu :smontagu]

Comment on attachment 98713 [details] [diff] [review]
Patch to languageNames.properties

-> attachment 105202 [details] [diff] [review]

Comment 14

[Katsuhiko Momoi]

> As Frisian appears only to be spoken in a couple of places 
> (with presumably no major changes in dialect), we only need to 
> add the language by itself to language.properties - we don't 
> need to include any dialects.  Patch coming up.

To be more accurate, this is not correct. 
"Frisian" according to Ethnologue database has 3 varieties
which are mutualy non-intelligible.
The one that the original reporter wants to add is:

Western Frisian (reportedly it has about 700,000 speakers).

See:

http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=FRI

There are also Eastern and Northern Frisian languages, for which
SIL suggest "gem" for Germanic as ISO-639-2 code.

Comment 15

[Jang Lemmer]

Just tell me if I should fill a new bug for the following, but I think it would
also be good here:

There are some more languages missing :-((
Luxembourgish (NOT luxembourgian ;-) ) which is spoken in Luxembourg of course.
It's even one of our official languages. But luxembourgish is also spoken in
belgium in the area around a town called Arlon. That whole area was part of
Luxembourg 200 years or so ago. That's why there are still a lot of people
speaking luxembourgish there.

So it would be great if you could also add:
Luxembourgish / Luxembourg [lb-lu]
Luxembourgish / Belgium [lb-be]

I never heard about Frisian, however why not add it if there are several 100k
people who speak it, and if there are even webpages in that lang?
For luxembourgish, most webpages in the .lu domain are in luxembourgish or do at
least have a luxembourgish version. I even know of ons site that recognizes
[lb-lu]. More Site will follow.... A local computer club is about to lauch
information for people to inform them how to set their browsers to [lb-lu] and
for webmasters on how to create pages recognising that language.

greetings from our litle country.

Comment 16

[Simon Montagu :smontagu]

This was fixed a long time ago in bug 178491