Another attempt at plain language
Doug Ewell
doug at ewellic.org
Thu Sep 10 21:20:47 CEST 2015
Kent Karlsson <kent dot karlsson14 at telia dot com> wrote:
> Thus, I would in addition prefer a subtag name like "easy" rather than
> "plain" or "simple". "Easy to read (or follow in speech), easy to
> understand".
That was exactly the opposite of my point. Language can be easy to
understand for (at least) two reasons:
1. because it uses basic vocabulary and grammatical structures
2. because the content is direct and to the point
I didn't want to argue over the exact value of the subtag, but to my
mind, 'easy' could denote either of these concepts, and I believe that
is quite the wrong approach.
I think at the least, 'plain' would likely be interpreted as
"straightforward, non-obfuscatory," which is NOT tied to any given
language, and 'simple' would likely be interpreted as "not requiring
advanced skills in language X."
These are very different concepts, and I do not think it is a good idea
to register a single subtag which would be construed to cover both of
them. I think we need to pick one, or else start talking about two
subtags.
--
Doug Ewell | http://ewellic.org | Thornton, CO 🇺🇸
More information about the Ietf-languages
mailing list