Thread:Talk:Languages by language family/Ethnologue errs with West Germanic languages./reply (5)

I've written another lengthy e-mail to SIL telling them of about a dozen or so points where they deviate from published academic opinions in the West Germanic tree. Some are apparent and obvious errors which they certainly will correct in the next edition. Two deviations are worth to mention here. One cannot be called an error, imho:
 * 1) Ethnologue has 4 language groups of West Germanic. Standard publications of the Dutch-German linguist community have one level of grouping in between, Anglo-Frisian, and Dutch-German (the latter often only called German) which Ethnologue skips. Imho you can make that, it's only unusual.
 * 2) In the High German group, you have the big subgroups Middle German (aka Central German) and Upper German, plus few languages/groups that cannot be clearly assigned to either subgroup. One of the latter, and the only one Ethnologue lists, is Yiddish, and its varieties. There is no need to create a "German" subgroup of High German so as to separate "Yiddish" from "German", which Ethnologue unnecessarily did. Despite being written in the Hebrew script, Yiddish is High German, and exhibits a mix of Middle and Upper German influences. There is no point to separate the other language groups of High German from it. A "High German, German" subgroup is just silly. Or else, if you had it, Yiddish was part of it, making it superfluous again. I hope, they straighten that with their next release.