New extension for transformed languages

[Doug Ewell]

Philippe Verdy wrote:

> By far, there's ample enough evidence that the Latin script is used
> almost exclusively for Breton.

Then there shouldn't be much trouble getting "Suppress-Script: Latn"
registered for Breton, although it may be argued that the traditional
use case for Suppress-Script (explicit 'Latn' script subtag causes
problems for legacy RFC 3066-era matching engines) might not apply
because of the comparatively low occurrence of content tagged "br".

> Even if it may happen that some obsure academic searcher has created
> (for his own usage) some transliteration to other scripts.

It doesn't matter. That's not what Suppress-Script is for.

> 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)...

Transcriptions are always useful for somebody. A great many people on
Earth are not linguists, and can read only one script. I won't try to
address the argument that IPA is not Latin and therefore everyone should
learn IPA.

> I absolutely don't know which political implication would have the
> registration of the script associated to regional languages like
> Breton.

I doubt there is one for Breton specifically. This problem certainly
does exist for some other languages, though, and that is the problem
with going off on a campaign to assign Suppress-Script for as many
languages as possible.

> 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).

What problems with language coding do you see?

> 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).

Anyone can write text in br-Dsrt or br-Brai if they want (and if they
can figure out how to represent the diacritical marks), and if the text
is tagged, the tag should probably include the script subtag. Remember,
Suppress-Script does not mean, "Nobody has ever written Breton in
Deseret." Instead, it means, "Written Breton is so likely to be written
in Latin that it's usually not necessary to say so."

--
Doug Ewell | Thornton, Colorado, USA
http://www.ewellic.org | @DougEwell ­