New extension for transformed languages

[Philippe Verdy]

Le 5 mars 2012 01:22, Doug Ewell <doug at ewellic.org> a écrit :
> You are welcome to propose a Suppress-Script for Breton and other
> languages, one at a time, if you can provide solid and objective
> evidence of "by far most common." Trying to fill in all the "gaps" in
> one effort is not worthwhile.

By far, there's ample enough evidence that the Latin script is used
almost exclusively for Breton. Even if it may happen that some obsure
academic searcher has created (for his own usage) some transliteration
to other scripts. Too many references available using the Latin script
for the "lingua franca" uage, even if it may happen that some language
school will create and use transcriptions (not sure that it will
really help to transcript it to the Cyrillic or Greek scripts, but may
be in the Arabic script (for use in a bilingual Breton-Arabic
dictionnary, even if the IPA transcription would be far better)...

If you just consider the case of pronunciations, even if IPA is used
for many languages (and well, considered as a distinct script using
symbols rather than orthographic letters), nothing has ever indicated
that the Latin script unified for use in IPA was a sign that would
indicate that Russian commonly uses the Latin script (or not even the
IPA notation, if considered as a separate script, as it should be,
just like the alternative UPA notation).

Even in the case of toponyms, this is not the Breton names (e.g.
Kemper) which are used as the source of transcriptions, but the French
names (e.g. Quimper). Not all toponyms are transcripted, many are left
intact, or partly translated (such as common parts like "Saint(s)").
Transcriptions are just an artifice used when there's no other name
commonly adopted in the target language, and they can aslo be the
first step to the creation of such translations, which also include
orthographic transforms that will look more conform to the usual
orthography and phonology of the target language.

Then there remans the case of people names and trademarks. Even if
their origin is Breton, they are left unchanged in most languages
includng French, or they will be transliterated to other scripts as if
they were French, not Breton.

I absolutely don't know which political implication would have the
registration of the script associated to regional languages like
Breton. The problem is not there (in the script) but in the
recognition of the language itself. There are MUCH more troubles with
the codifications of languages, than there are for scripts (the
wellknown exceptions being the case of IPA notation vs. Latin script ;
or Simplified vs. Traditional sinograms, and sometimes, vs.
Japanese-only sinograms not considered Kanji=Traditional).

Regional languages developed in regions that are dominated by a
language that has never known any switch of script, also don't have
any problem for the script they use themselves. This is clear and not
subject to discussions, unless there are active promoters in that
region for using a distinct script and producing a dictionnary with
that alternate script. As far as I know, there's never been any
attempt by Breton promoters to write it using Deseret. However there's
some development using the French Braille transcription system (which
is almost always used in association with the Latin script).