Revised request: Japanese transliteration variants

[Randy Presuhn]

Hi -

> From: "Doug Ewell" <doug at ewellic.org>
> To: <ietf-languages at iana.org>
> Sent: Thursday, September 03, 2009 6:25 AM
> Subject: Re: Revised request: Japanese transliteration variants
>
> Randy Presuhn <randy underscore presuhn at mindspring dot com> wrote:
> 
> > If the intent is that the variant subtag's meaning would be "any of 
> > the romanizations known as Hepburn" then, regardless whether the other 
> > subtags are registered, I'd like the description to make that clear. 
> > Just omitting the "modified" or "revised" qualifier doesn't really 
> > accomplish that - something more explicit would be helpful.
> 
> We registered 'pinyin' last year with the relatively general Description 
> field "Pinyin romanization" under the premise that it could be used for 
> Hanyu Pinyin, Tongyong Pinyin, or Tibetan Pinyin (a decision which I 
> know you and others opposed, but it was upheld by the Reviewer).  The 
> intent was not "any romanization known as 'pinyin'," but rather "any 
> romanization that follows the general Pinyin model," thus including 
> Tongyong and Tibetan but excluding Wade-Giles.
> 
> I don't see why this strategy would not work for Hepburn as well, or why 
> doing something different would achieve anything but inconsistency.  The 
> subtag 'hepburn' as proposed doesn't strictly mean "any romanization 
> known as Hepburn," but rather "any romanization that follows the general 
> Hepburn model," thus including the three varieties of Hepburn we have 
> discussed but excluding Kunrei-shiki and Nihon-shiki.
...

FWIW, I still think this is the wrong way to go.  I could support
"any romanization known as Hepburn", since developers/users would be
highly unlikely to get that wrong.  I can't support "any romanization
that follows the general Hepburn model."  The discussion of Pinyin
made it quite clear that "follows the general X model" is a highly
subjective statement.

Randy