Reshat Sabiq's requests for two Tatar orthographic variants

CE Whitehead cewcathar at hotmail.com
Tue Dec 19 17:37:36 CET 2006


Hi, I think I tend to support the idea that Reshat should be able to get 
some sort of subtag to identify the script.
I am not sure what is the appropriate one or to which cases it should be 
applied because this is not my area of expertise.  (My experience with 
Latination and different alphabets is limited to trying to learn to type on 
a typewriter I borrowed at a youth hostel in turkey once; I know about it 
otherwise but do not know these alphabets.)

I wish I could be of more support.

--C. E. Whitehead
cewcathar at hotmail.com

>
>Doug Ewell yazmış:
> > CE Whitehead <cewcathar at hotmail dot com> wrote:
> >
> >> O.k. thanks, I do not know enough about these languages, my apologies.
> >> If the languages were normally written in Latin-based script then the
> >> script tag would be redundant;
> >> if they were normally written in Cyrillic script, then it would be
> >> necessary;
> >> also, if they can be written in either script, then the script tag
> >> would be necessary;
> >> also if they are  were written in Arabic or any other script at least
> >> a good bit of the time (though not necessarily the majority of the
> >> time), the script tag would be necessary.
> >
> > This is all correct as far as it goes, but ReÅŸat's requests had nothing
> > to do with script subtags.  He was requesting variant subtags for
> > specific *orthographies* of Tatar et al. that are primarily written with
> > Latin letters, with a few Cyrillic letters thrown in (but the overall
> > script is still Latin).  There are several ways to write Tatar in Latin
> > script, and ReÅŸat's proposed subtag "ussrlatn" would have identified a
> > specific one.
>First an off-topic comment: it is indeed not easy to come up with a good
>generic variant for latinization that dozens of languages underwent in
>late 1920s, and through-out 1930s. But i can't help but notice the
>irony, that decisions on these actual mass latinizations were probably
>taken more quickly than our variant deliberations. It is however more of
>a negative for those decisions than these deliberations.
>In principal, i agree that latn is redundant in the variant, but in
>practical terms a lot of frameworks only support a single variant as of
>now, for -Latn-variant is not alway practical. However, i do not expect
>this variant to be heavily used for i18n. It's more likely to come up in
>  individual sources on the web, as sources from those times could get
>published in scanned or typed form.
>As far as ussr in variant name, the only meaning i was attaching to it
>is to reflect a time frame: after all, for almost all applicable
>languages there was only 1 significant Latn alphabet during ussr history.
>
>If ussrlatn, or any of the other generic suggestions in my original
>request don't appear to be appealing, and there are no other suggestions
>that try to reflect the generic nature of mass latinization of multiple
>languages (Turkic and non-Turkic), I think janalif would do for
>starters. If further such requests come over time, or there are fresher
>ideas for variant name later on, it could always be deprecated, and
>replaced.
>If that's the consensus, please consider whether janalif as a variant
>name could be applied to all languages in the original request, or only
>to Tatar. As i've mentioned before, my interest stems from Tatar, but i
>always make an effort to re-use every byte. ;)
>
>Sincerely,
>Reshat.
>
>- --

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