Subject: Re: [Ietf-languages] Language subtag registration form

From: "Doug Ewell" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 24 Nov 2020 21:30:21 -0700

These are both adequate explanations of how Arcaicam Esperantom differs
from standard Esperanto. They don't necessarily address the question of
whether the present use case is tagging of actual content or
documentation of a language variety. BCP 47 tags aren't for the latter.

That said, I'm convinced that this is a solid request. If I were the
Reviewer, I'd expect to approve it.

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

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [Ietf-languages] Language subtag registration form
From: Ben Scarborough <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, November 24, 2020 7:02 pm
To: Doug Ewell <[email-masked]>
Cc: [email-masked]

Doug,

There are two circumstances where I think the language tag would be
useful.

1) Separating Arcaicam Esperantom data from standard Esperanto. Reading
A.E.
requires a bit of knowledge beyond fundamenta Esperanto, and
appropriately
tagged resources would make it easier to provide users with glosses or
text
replacement or even automated translation. (A naïve translation of A.E.
to
Esperanto is likely to sound stilted, but it is more feasible than an
automated
process going the other way around.)

2) Screen readers. Any Esperanto text-to-speech program given unexpected
Arcaicam Esperantom text is going to have a hard time producing
understandable
output. Being able to switch to different pronunciation rules, or to
request an
alternate data stream, or even to notify the user that a blob of text is
"arkaike Esperanta teksto" might be more helpful than a system
attempting
inhuman consonant clusters (or worse, interrupting words with the entire
phrase
"latin small ligature oe").

Both of these cases are aided by being able to tag Arcaicam Esperantom
text
differently than standard Esperanto.

—Ben Scarborough

---

From: Ben Scarborough <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 29 Nov 2020 09:11:53 -0600

On 26 Nov 2020, at 03:15, Michael Everson wrote:
>I don’t know if I prefer “variety” to “dialect” but there really isnt a need to have “Archaic” in scare quotes in the Comments field.

Point taken. I'll remove them in the revised form.

>Having said that, wouldn't modern Esperantists will find the subtag “arkaika” easier to recognize and remember than “arcaicam”?

As far as I can tell, the name "Arcaicam Esperantom" is handled like
an unnaturalized proper name. I have no hard data to back that up, but
I can see that eo.wikipedia.org has had Arcaicam Esperantom as an
article since 2003, with no attempts to move it to Arkaika Esperanto
or Arĥaika Esperanto.

That being said... to someone who knows Esperanto but /hasn't heard of
A.E./, the word "arcaicam" would look entirely out of place and
foreign. Even if "Arcaicam Esperantom" is the most commonly seen
version of the name, there is likely a benefit to users if Esperanto's
variant subtags would use standard Esperanto words.

This e-mail has taken a long time to draft while I debate with myself
which is the better choice, and I'm increasingly convinced it's
"arkaika".

>Did he “define” it or “devise” it? I think the latter.

Devise.

I'll send an amended registration form shortly.

—Ben Scarborough

>Michael
>
>> On 25 Nov 2020, at 04:52, Doug Ewell <[email-masked]> wrote:
>>
>> Ben Scarborough wrote:
>>
>>> I will gladly amend my form if the opinion is that "sociolect" is not
>>> a suitable term to use here.
>>
>> Just for the record, we aren't absolutely required to wrap ourselves
>> around this axle. For example, the line could simply read:
>>
>> Comments: "Archaic" Esperanto variety defined by Manuel Halvelik
>>
>> It's just a comment, after all.
>>
>> --
>> _______________________________________________
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>> [email-masked]
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