Registration of argots.

[Sean M. Burke]

Michael Everson naysaid at Jon Hanna:
>>Can thieves' cants and similar slangs that deliberately redefine a 
>>languages lexicon be registered?
>I doubt it.[...]Because the fundamental structure of the language is 
>unchanged, and the number of lexical items changed would be rather small. 
>This is not dialect -- it is poetry. Of a sort.

Ah, like en-US and en-CA?  Or Serbian (sr) and Croatian (hr)?  After all, 
"the fundamental structure of the language is unchanged, and the number of 
lexical items changed [is] rather small."  Or is it?


A little Eurocrat voice in my head always makes me want to answer questions 
that start "can  I...?" with answers that start "Are your papers in 
order?  Have you cited precedent in your preliminary petition to consider 
proposal for petition, provided an obviously compelling need, and duly 
proved that no-one can misconstrue that anything could go 
wrong?".  However, I have come to treat that Eurocrat with solid doses of 
weiqi, seratonin-control drugs, and an occasional brick about the head.  So 
I now think that better principles would be: "Is there a /compelling/ 
reason why /not/?" and "Let's try it and see, it's no big deal!".  I mean, 
we're giving out language tags here, not donating kidneys.

(I now sense that the little Eurocrat voice in my head now wants to argue 
about the metaprinciples behind my proposed principles.  Now where did I 
put that brick?)

--
Sean M. Burke    http://search.cpan.org/author/sburke/