RE: Basic English

[Shawn Steele <[e-mail]>]

So (ironically from me), where would we stop?

Presumably libraries won't fail because there's no tag for Basic English. Basic English has never had a tag before, and that hasn't prevented books from being written in it, nor libraries from including it in their catalog.

This particular language is getting attention because at this moment Michael is interested in translating material to Basic English, desires a code for that work, and knows how to make a proposal.  There is also more historical writing in Basic English than in many of the other published varieties of English that have been experimented with, but probably less that 'simplified' English.

I don't want to start judging subtags on their merits, but it probably shouldn't be allowed to be a free-for-all.  It seems like if a subtag for Basic English is interesting, then subtags for all of the others like Anglic, Amxrikai Spek, etc. creations should also be allowed.  That level of detail under an "en" tag seems likely to disrupt library classification systems that currently tend to put constructed languages in their own unique place.  

A library probably wouldn't want to file these constructed English texts with English, and they're likely of most interest to academics and others interested in constructed languages.  It doesn't make sense from a librarians point of view to shelve Basic English "Alice in Wonderland" next to English "Alice in Wonderland", the same way I wouldn't shelve a German version in the same section.

I wonder if there should be a subtag to indicate constructed variants, and then include a bunch of the known constructed variants of English?

-Shawn