Use term "natural language" instead of "human language" in glossary?

[himorin]

WCAG 2.2 spec defines a term 'human language' in glossary, which is similar to 'natural language' in i18n glossary

https://w3c.github.io/wcag/guidelines/22/#dfn-human-language-s

human language
language that is spoken, written or signed (through visual or tactile means) to communicate with humans

https://www.w3.org/TR/i18n-glossary/#def_natural_language

Natural Language (sometimes just language) refers to the spoken, written, or signed communications used by human beings. See also localizable text and syntactic content.

i18n would like to hear feeling whether to replace with more generally used term "natural language".

[bruce-usab]

+1 for natural language but does anyone know how people who advocate for Plain Language distinguish between programming languages and human languages? My first impression is that "natural language" is comp sci academic jargon.

[alastc]

It is before my time (WCAG 2.0), but I assume it was chosen as a better way of differentiating from programming languages. Or perhaps it raises the question: What is an un-natural language? Human vs programming seems more concrete to me.

It seems like a small change, but it would have a ripple effect to a lot of other documentation, so changing the term is unlikely to get support from the group.

[bruce-usab]

Yes, point was to differentiate from programming languages.

Am I correct that the WCAG 2.0 definition predates the i18n definition?

[cstrobbe]

The term "human language" was chosen instead of "natural language" not primarily to differentiate them from programming languages but for a different reason. The term "natural language" may be defined as "any language that has evolved naturally in humans through use and repetition without conscious planning or premeditation" (I'm quoting Wikipedia's definition for convenience). When I was studying linguistics, a "natural language" was also defined as one that people learn as their native language.
So the term "natural language" excludes constructed languages in which web content may also be created, unless there are people who learn them as their native language. Esperanto is said to have native speakers (though not necessarily as their only native language) but most don't (or have very few, such as Ido). These may seem like edge cases, but their are Wikipedia editions in Esperanto and Ido, for example.

WCAG's current definition of "human language" includes those languages. The term "human language" would exclude most constructed languages.

[cstrobbe]

I have asked the editors of the i18n-glossary to clarify what exactly they mean with (or what they exclude from) their definition of "natural language": Where does the definition of natural language draw the line between natural languages and other human languages?

[bruce-usab]

Thanks @cstrobbe as I think clarification from the the 18n-glossary editors would be very helpful.

Two examples of constructed human language, in the domain of disability, are Bliss and Minspeak. That is evidence that WCAG certainly means to include some constructed languages, and argues for not substituting your stricter definition for natural language.

Another example of a constructed human language which, this being the Internet, we would want to cover is Klingon. That strikes me as ironic, since the WCAG term human language would be meant to be applicable to a natural language used by non-humans.

[cstrobbe]

Another example of a constructed human language which, this being the Internet, we would want to cover is Klingon. That strikes me as ironic, since the WCAG term "human language" would be meant to be applicable to a natural language used by non-humans.

Believe it or not, but someone on planet Earth actually spoke only Klingon to his son for three years, so it was a human child's native language for some time.