gender voice variants

Mark Davis ☕ mark at macchiato.com
Thu Dec 20 18:55:34 CET 2012


The world is rarely "clean" in that sense. The distinction between en-CA,
en-US, and en-GB is not clean (look at the usage of the Oxford comma, which
cuts across this; let alone the Shatner comma ;-). Nor are the current
variants "clean" in the sense of always being algorithmically determinable.

However, certain distinctions even if not perfect, are often extremely
useful.

Karen just mentioned "I can't make a use case for your creating formal and
informal versions of an OS". In response, I gave an example of a very real
use case. And while it may perfectly represent the nuances of expression
possible with human language, it does solve a significant issue in IT.

However, I'm *not* pushing for registration of the formal/informal
distinction with BCP47 variants. "Usefulness in IT" unfortunately seems to
have little weight as a criterion for registration of variants, so if we
decide we need to have it, we'd take the route of proposing a -u or -t
subtag instead.


Mark <https://plus.google.com/114199149796022210033>
*
*
*— Il meglio è l’inimico del bene —*
**


On Thu, Dec 20, 2012 at 2:22 AM, Michael Everson <everson at evertype.com>wrote:

> On 20 Dec 2012, at 02:01, "Broome, Karen" <Karen.Broome at am.sony.com>
> wrote:
>
> >> The problem comes in when you have shared online components. You really
> don't want to mix du and Sie on the same page, addressing the same user.
> >
> > This. So you want this to be in the language tag. Keeps it clean.
>
> Levels of politeness in pronominal and verbal structures is not binarily
> "clean" in the world's languages. "Formal" and "informal" is not adequate,
> if you want to argue for opening a floodgate.
>
> Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com/
>
> _______________________________________________
> Ietf-languages mailing list
> Ietf-languages at alvestrand.no
> http://www.alvestrand.no/mailman/listinfo/ietf-languages
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://www.alvestrand.no/pipermail/ietf-languages/attachments/20121220/1cc6057f/attachment.html>


More information about the Ietf-languages mailing list