LANGUAGE SUBTAG REGISTRATION FORM: Anglish

[Sean B. Palmer]

Michael Everson wrote:

> To start with this sort of "cleanspeech" sounds like a very, very broad notion

Well Anglo-Saxon isn't very "clean", and even the very name of it
shows a compounding of the dialects of two peoples. As James Joyce
says:

"You tollerday donsk? N. You tolkatiff scowegian? Nn. You spigotty
anglease? Nnn. You phonio saxo? Nnnn. Clear all so! 'Tis a Jute."

And there are various dialects of Anglo-Saxon, Mercian, Kentish,
Northumbrian and the like. I know that there are some questions around
this cultural dimension, and I was going to include a reference to a
recent paper on linguistic purity that mentions Anglish, but I didn't
think it was relevant. I like Anglish just as I like English Scots.

It may be broad, but there is always a hierarchy of usage from broad
language families down to an individual's idiolect. A language tag is
going to always going to be an umbrella for some variance. At any rate
I'm not going to defend or denounce my submission particularly far,
because the subtag should be admitted or not on its own merits,
independent of rhetorical skill in the pro- or anti- camps. I'm not
proselytising!

I know moreover that you are already familiar with Anglish, and I'm
sure you and Doug Ewell will assess the submission competently, and I
will bow to whatever you decide. Only, if the tag is not accepted, I
would be grateful for advice on which alternative would be most
reasonable to use. But if it is accepted, I wouldn't personally find
en-anglish usage principles confusing.

Warm regards,

-- 
Sean B. Palmer