[Future] Further differentiate what Modality: Spoken & Modality: Written mean

[conradarcturus]

This task is an open-ended design problem that is not a high priority for the current version of LangNav -- but we're opening the task to identify a limitation with the data/UX. Right now we don't have a clear solution and this task will require thinking through it.

Right now we have an enumeration of language modalities, is a language: Written, Spoken, Sign, or a mixture of Written & Spoken on a spectrum Written <-> Mostly Written <-> Written & Spoken <-> Mostly Spoken <-> Spoken only.

However, this generalizes a few nuances that may be better to distinguish.

• Used in Common communication versus specialized modes (Liturgical)
• Modern usage v historical usage
• Languages with a different lexicon specialized for writing, sometimes these variants have their own language codes sometimes they don't -- for example

Some examples

• Latin [lat] is a liturgical language that can be spoken but it is not used in common communication
• Hittite [hit] is a historical language, it used to be spoken but now it is only preserved in documents
• Standard Arabic [arb] is the written form used by most Arabic [ara] speakers but in most personal communication they use other dialects like Egyptian Arabic [arz] and Moroccan Arabic [ary] -- it's weird talking about spoken & written forms
• Chinese [zho] is often the "Standard Chinese" label but it's also the macrolanguage. Since Chinese languages are written in logograms, they are effectively all written in the same written standard, so Cantonese [yue], Hakka [hak], etc. are Spoken variants that could have other written forms (especially when transliterated into phonetic Latin characters) but largely use the Standard written form