Is there a subtag for 'plain English' or 'simplified English'
Doug Ewell
dewell at adelphia.net
Tue Dec 19 17:55:34 CET 2006
Peter Constable <petercon at microsoft dot com> wrote:
> Perhaps variant subtags "colloq" and "legal" (and perhaps others for
> other registers of English usage). Of course, the vast majority of
> English content is colloquial, so "colloq" would only get used in
> particular application contexts, e.g. if you were maintaining a corpus
> of documents used for training natural-language processing tools.
That's still too broad and general. What is colloquial for a church
sermon or attorney's letter is unspeakably formal and stilted when
shouted across a football field.
Stephane's point about ASD Simplified Technical English is a good one;
it is well-defined and such a subtag would be meaningful and
interoperable. So would a subtag for Basic English, also clearly
defined. I don't believe the difference between "Hello" and "Hi" and
"Hey, dude, what's up" can be reasonably captured in short alphabetic
tags.
--
Doug Ewell * Fullerton, California, USA * RFC 4645 * UTN #14
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