Thread:Talk:Languages by language family/Ethnologue errs with West Germanic languages./reply (3)

Sourcesa are diverging. Many do not mention the "German" group of the 2nd list, some more modern ones call it "Dutch-German", older ones call it "German" or very similar. Nothing I know of is backing SIL/Ethnologue.

ISO 629-3 is the standard, and of course does not say anything about language families. Ethnologue is not a standard, makes obviously wrong claims here and there, but is published by the same organisation (SIL) as ISO 639-3 is. I do send them e-mail about their errors and omissions, and they corrected some things already, but that took long time.

Since Ethnologue is not a standard, I would not give much about not following it, if there are good sources showing that they err.

We do not follow it, e.g. by correctly putting Limbourgish (of the Dutch and Belgish provinces Limbourg) to its Low Franconian relatives, and not - like Ethnologue does - into Rhine-Franconian, despite the fact that there is a city and bishopric called "Limburg" near Frankfurt in Rhine-Hesse, too, where a Rhine-Franconian Variety is spoken.