LANGUAGE SUBTAG REGISTRATION FORM (R3): pinyin

[Michael Everson]

On 8 Sep 2008, at 19:52, Frank Ellermann wrote:

> Michael Everson wrote:
>
>> So, what helps us move forward here?
>
> How about zh-Latn- for now, that can't be wrong.

Except that it excludes Tibetan and other languages. Yesterday Peter  
said that Tibetan Pinyin should register its own subtag.

> On 7 Sep 2008, at 20:39, Peter Constable wrote:
>> The registration under discussion says explicitly "Mandarin".  
>> Unless that is changed, then someone wanting to tag "Tibetan  
>> Pinyin" should be using a different tag.
>>
>> Either way, the "Latn" part is entirely appropriate.


That is just wrong, in my opinion.

Whether or not the intent of the subtag was for Mandarin, it is wrong  
to limit the use of the subtag by restricting it to zh- or zh-Latn or  
zh-cmn- or zh-cmn-Latn since that would appear to exclude other  
languages. Since bo-pinyin or bo-Latn-pinyin would be equally correct,  
it appears that pinyin is indeed analogous to fonipa and fonupa: a  
Latin orthography which can be applied to more than one language.

I'm also not willing to gamble that Wade-Giles was never used for any  
language in addition to Mandarin.

Accordingly, I believe that the best course of action is *not* to  
specify a prefix.

Type: variant
Subtag: pinyin
Description: Pinyin romanization of Chinese. This is primarily  
Mandarin Chinese (where the prefixes zh- and/or zh-Latn- may be used);  
other languages may also use this subtag, with or without -Latn-.

Compare:

Type: variant
Subtag: fonipa
Description: International Phonetic Alphabet

I trust that this compromise will prove satisfactory.

Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com