Pinyin

[Michael Everson]

I would like to hear specific comments about this. I asked for it  
first on 2008-09-17.

Right. So we need to be able to tag data so that people know that the
language is Mandarin and the specific Romanization is Hanyu Pinyin, a
Latin-based orthography. However, the orthographic conventions behind
Pinyin are applied to other Chinese languages, and in a variant used
in Taiwan.

zh-pinyin
zh-CN-pinyin
zh-Latn-pinyin
zh-Latn-CN-pinyin
These are formally ambiguous as to which Chinese language (in terms of
the set of languages written in Han characters) it is. However, in
this registration, I think we ought to SPECIFY that the string zh-
pinyin refers to Mandarin Chinese in Hanyu Pinyin orthography--not to
any other form of Chinese nor any other orthography.

zh-cmn-pinyin
zh-cmn-Latn-pinyin
zh-cmn-CN-pinyin
zh-cmn-Latn-CN-pinyin
cmn-pinyin
cmn-Latn-pinyin
cmn-CN-pinyin
cmn-Latn-CN-pinyin
All of these can only mean Mandarin Chinese in Hanyu Pinyin
romanization; they are not yet permitted but will be (one supposes).
Other Chinese languages might be listed with 639-3 in due course.
For the present, this set doesn't matter to us. It's a large set though.

zh-TW-pinyin
zh-Latn-TW-pinyin
This is Tongyong Pinyin orthography, also to be defined as Mandarin
Chinese language.

zh-cmn-TW-pinyin
zh-cmn-Latn-TW-pinyin
cmn-TW-pinyin
cmn-Latn-TW-pinyin
All of these can only mean Mandarin Chinese in Tongyong Pinyin
romanization; they are not yet permitted but will be (one supposes).
For the present, this set doesn't matter to us.

bo-pinyin
bo-Latn-pinyin
Both of these mean Tibetan language in Tibetan Pinyin romanization (as
opposed to Wiley for instance).

Peter says he would like the recommended prefix to contain -Latn-.
Mark said he could live with or without it but thought that "with"
should be recommended. Should we assist users of this subtag by having
some redundancy in the registration? At this stage I think that "best
practice" (with -Latn-) being the only one specified might be
insufficient.

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

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