Early Modern English

[Yury Tarasievich]

This nuance of this list discussions always 
confuses me.

The section 2.2.5 of RFC5646 does not explicitly 
require variant subtag to be context free or to 
refer to one language only, which is also what 
common sense suggests, as subtags are intended 
to form a context hierarchy, and are not 
supposed to be regarded out of context.

E.g., to me, the hypothetical 
'academy'/'academic' subtag would make perfect 
sense, and it could be further precised with 
year subtag, and would (or could) already have 
context (region) set. So, '-academic-1959' 
instead of '-1959acad', and now 
'-academic-2010', too (in the Belarusian case 
mentioned by you).

The 'tudor' refers to the period, and sort of 
makes sense, from the same point of view, but 
not from the 'the subtag must be context free' 
POV. Likewise, the 'earlymod', which too might 
be used for another language's Early Modern variant.

Yury

On 01/21/2012 11:36 PM, Doug Ewell wrote:
...
> I don't understand how having a single subtag
> for Early Modern English
> and for Tudor Cornish, even if they do span
> approximately the same
> historical period, is consistent with this
> list's (very well, YOUR)
> objections to similar subtags over the years. We
> don't have 'western'
> and 'academic', and probably won't have
> 'earlymod', because you've
> argued successfully that they could be
> misappropriated for languages
> other than Western Armenian and Academic
> Belarusian and Early Modern
> English.
...
> My "problem" is that I don't see how English and
> Cornish are similar
> enough for their respective "Tudor" variants to
> be taggable by a single
> subtag, any more than "Western This" and
> "Western That" could be. (One
> language is Germanic, the other Celtic.) To me,
> this is a built-in
> misappropriation. In this I differ with you, and
> with Mark Davis.
...