an old item: es-americas

Peter Constable petercon at microsoft.com
Thu Mar 25 22:40:31 CET 2004


> From: ietf-languages-bounces at alvestrand.no [mailto:ietf-languages-


> I would support something like this. I am not sure if "dialect" is the
right
> term, but there is a clear need to identify and articulate that a set
of text
> is purposed for certain markets, without declaring that it is a
well-described,
> clearly defined "language"...

> there is a legitimate and growing business need to properly
> label text and its intended usage...

Precisely: it is not a distinct language, or even a distinct dialect;
rather, it is a *usage* of a particular language that is tailored to
accommodate a particular geographic region. 

There is a sense in which it *might* be called a dialect, but there
isn't any community for which that is their spoken or written dialect;
rather, it would have to be considered an artificially-constructed
dialect intended to service a set of communities. And a definitional
description of it would have to be described in a different way than
speech varieties are normally described (e.g "when discussing semantic
domain X, such-and-such terms should be avoided").



Peter
 
Peter Constable
Globalization Infrastructure and Font Technologies
Microsoft Windows Division


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