pinyin (and wadegile) request has gotten derailed

CE Whitehead cewcathar at hotmail.com
Sat Sep 13 19:53:21 CEST 2008


Hi!

I agree we should get this subtag proposal decided on.

However although I supported and support moving the subtag request forward prior to RFC 4646bis for expediency, I'm a bit troubled by our officially sanctioning [zh] as denoting specifically Mandarin Chinese even if people now use it to mean such--I think this has been discussed throughout July and August (
see:  http://www.alvestrand.no/pipermail/ietf-languages/2008-August/007901.html though Randy has a different opinion:
http://www.alvestrand.no/pipermail/ietf-languages/2008-August/007882.html  however I think Tibetan does not require so many distinctions in tone as to make Hanyu Pinyin ill-suited; see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tibetan_language#Tones).

So it's not like Michael Everson just came up with this objection now.  When RFC 4646bis  comes out, we can request the second subtag and have a subtag exclusively for Mandarin Chinese.  In the meantime I think it should be Chinese in general we are using the [zh] subtag to mean.

If Mark wants to use [zh-Latn-pinyin] (or whatever) to tag primarily Mandarin content that is fine as [zh] is the only subtag available, and Mandarin speakers will probably be able to find their content??  But we don't have to restrict the subtag [zh] here to mean that . . . 

Can't the language subtag reviewer suggest a revision?  (I'd also like to hear from the orginal requester what he thinks of the revision too, if it's o.k.?)




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

( Otherwise I'm o.k. with the proposal's going forward.  (It was decided back in July that this subtag should refer to Hanyu not Tongyojg Pinyin or any other orthography, and I am in favor of that; see:
http://www.alvestrand.no/pipermail/ietf-languages/2008-July/007812.html
And I have no problems with the name [pinyin]--if we choose to have it refer to this particular Romanization [though there is the [pinyin] in use in Taiwan and now that will have to have a different name]--but [pinyin] is available and is not being used for anything at this moment. SO that is o.k. with me, but so is [hanyu]).

 I cannot say I've gone through every single posting on this, but I did try, and I concluded that it was still in the air whether [zh] should be exclusively Mandarin but I have to review September still )

From: "Phillips, Addison" 
Subject: To: Peter Constable ,
> I concur.

> More specifically, I would call on the Language Subtag Reviewer
> (Michael) to explicitly accept or reject the request. It has been
> two weeks by any measure. BCP 47, Section 3.5 requires such
> an announcement.

Can't the language subtag reviewer suggest a modification of the request?  And can't Mark Davis indicate whether that modification would be o.k.?

> Addison

> Addison Phillips
> Globalization Architect -- Lab126


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