Pending requests

Kent Karlsson kent.karlsson14 at telia.com
Thu Nov 26 12:19:27 CET 2015


> 
Den 2015-11-25 21:01, skrev "Doug Ewell" <doug at ewellic.org>:

> Shawn Steele wrote:
...
> and Mark Davis wrote:

>> ​I disagree with "basiceng". What people need is a variant to indicate
>> a simplified version of a language. That is not satisfied by
>> "Basic English", which nobody has a demonstrated need for.

> "Basic Foo" and "Simple Foo" are not the same thing,

Perhaps...

> and without 
> being able to read his mind, I suspect one reason Michael proposed both
> might be to draw attention to that fact.

Like confusing everyone that does not have English as native language,
or have never heard of **Ogden's** Basic English before...

I'm indifferent as to whether one should add a variant subtag for "Ogden
Basic
English", but if added, the subtag must *not* be "basiceng", as that would
certainly be interpreted as some/any kind of "simplified English". "ogden",
"ogdeneng" would be fine.

-------

Ok, I've mentioned it before, but here it is again:

I generally agree with Shawn and Mark here.

BUT, I would prefer a scheme based on CEFR
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_European_Framework_of_Reference_for_La
nguages#Common_reference_levels,
http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/linguistic/Source/Framework_EN.pdf).

The A levels are, however, so basic that it is hard to give any new
information
(like in a Wikipedia article or a news article/podcast/etc). So for the
purpose
of "simplified language tagging" the A levels could be skipped (IMO).

The C2 level, IIUC, isn't quite like "advanced native speaker", but close.

So, instead of "-simple" or "-basic", something along the lines of:

    -levelB1
    -levelB2
    -levelC1
    -levelC2

(referring to the CEFR levels) would be my preference. No prefixes listed,
i.e.
these variant subtags should be recommendably applicable to any language.

Thus nobody (or 'no body') "controlling" the simplification, no particular
dictionary
or similar, as that would defy applicability to most languages.

True, the descriptions of the levels may be a bit hand-waving, but that is
the
very thing that makes them applicable to any language.

As always, it is the tagger's responsibility to see to that "level" tag
sufficiently well
corresponds to the CEFR level of the content (for a reader/listener
interested in the
subject of the content).
 
There are other schemes
(see 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_European_Framework_of_Reference_for_Lan
guages#General_scales),
but they seem much harder to use (just for the level naming alone).

/Kent K

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