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Re: Another attempt at plain language

Mark Davis ☕️ <mark@macchiato.com> Sun, 13 September 2015 15:49 UTC

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From: Mark Davis ☕️ <mark@macchiato.com>
Date: Sun, 13 Sep 2015 17:49:13 +0200
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Subject: Re: Another attempt at plain language
To: Michael Everson <everson@evertype.com>
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Cc: ietf-languages@alvestrand.no, Tobias Bengfort <tobias.bengfort@posteo.de>
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On Sun, Sep 13, 2015 at 5:14 PM, Michael Everson <everson@evertype.com>
wrote:

> I don’t know. A conformance statement? In any case it doesn’t seem
> taggable. There are books for early readers and young adults and college
> students but the difference of language use in those books is not precisely
> defined. Nor is the WCAG’s recommendation (or requirement) without
> ambiguity.
>

As I wrote, this is overly formalistic.

If the purpose is to distinguish webpages by BCP47 language tags, it is
perfectly reasonable on a site to want to distinguish between a "normal"
version, and a simplified version (not only for accessibility, but also for
second-language speakers).

Of the many thousands of languages that are encodeable with BCP47, almost
none of them have a "precise definition". It is not productive to disallow
a reasonably clear variant because it doesn't meet a standard *also not met
by essentially any of the primary language subtags.*

Mark <https://google.com/+MarkDavis>

*— Il meglio è l’inimico del bene —*

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