Spanglish

[Doug Ewell]

Luc Pardon wrote:

> While I have no (technical) issue with region tags, I do have an
> issue with script. Script is - at least in my view - unrelated to
> language. It is a way of rendering it, much like font type and font
> size is, or printed versus handwritten, or audio versus text.
>
> If I have a text in the Greek language, I can write that down with
> Greek characters, or I can transliterate it into Latin, or Russian, or
> whatever. The language remains exactly the same Greek, written by the
> same writer.

From a pure linguistic standpoint, Chinese texts written in simplified
characters and in traditional characters are indeed the same language.
From the standpoint of providing or selecting language resources, they
are as different as if one of the resources were Arabic.

Language tags of the BCP 47 variety were invented and developed with
this resource scenario as an important use case, probably more so than
to reflect pure definitions of "language."

Whether or not content developers are required to follow WCAG and tag
each occurrence of mixed-language usage, I would suggest that 100%
actual adherence to the guidelines in every instance is far from a fait
accompli. Oops, I forgot to tag that.

--
Doug Ewell | Thornton, CO, US | ewellic.org