registration requests re Portuguese

Duncan MacKenzie duncan at duncanmacweb.com
Sun Apr 12 13:38:09 CEST 2015


TL;DR: My reading of the RFC suggests that it wants people to be able to use subtags conformingly wherever there might be a sensible use for them, and I support Prefix: pt, gl.

I, too, support the proposal to avoid specifying particular countries. ao1990 is a spelling system that can be applied to any regional variant of Portuguese.

Reading RFC 5646, s. 3.1.8 <http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5646#section-3.1.8>, the purpose of ‘Prefix’ is to make recommendations so that a tag using ao1990 should match a ‘Prefix’ field and the purpose is that conforming subtags will be meaningful—the examples given of zh-cmn (“makes sense”) and is-1994 (“not appropriate”) indicates that the ‘Prefix’ should exclude nonsensical usage but says nothing about restricting a subtag based on anything other than appropriateness and meaningfulness. My reading of this suggests that this RFC wants people to be able to use subtags conformingly wherever there might be a sensible use for them.

As Luc has previously pointed out, it can also be applied to Galician and there is support for that among some speakers of Galician as well as at least one publication in Galician:

> On 26 Mar 2015, at 17:02, Luc Pardon <lucp at skopos.be <mailto:lucp at skopos.be>> wrote:
> 
> On 26-03-15 17:40, Shawn Steele wrote:
>> Some of that has been happening.  The way to be independent would be to attach it to pt and let users do as they will.  Perhaps some of these other countries have "early adopters" that would like to experiment with the proposal before it's ratified?
> 
> Probably, and there is even more. I read [1] that the "Novas da Galiza"
> (in Galicia, Spain) adopted ao1990 in january 2011 already. They have a
> website [2] so they'd really need to tag it properly (currently they don't).
> 
> The proper way to help them would be to add "Prefix: glc" to ao1990.
> 
> What I'm trying to say: if even "Prefix: pt" would be too restrictive to
> serve today's adopters, it's yet another reason to not go for "Prefix:
> pt-PT".
> 
> Luc Pardon
> 
> [1] https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acordo_Ortogr%C3%A1fico_de_1990 <https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acordo_Ortogr%C3%A1fico_de_1990>
> 
> [2] http://www.novasgz.com/ <http://www.novasgz.com/>

On this basis, AO1990 is a spelling reform which, whatever its details and politics, can be applied to any regional variant of Portuguese if a writer so wishes. Because of the close similarities between Portuguese and Galician, it can also be applied to Galician, and there has been support for doing that from 1990 (AO1990 participants <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuguese_Language_Orthographic_Agreement_of_1990#Participants>) to the present (Novas da Galiza <http://www.novasgz.com/>).

I would therefore support

Prefix: pt
Prefix: gl

Best,

Duncan

N.B. I sent this message previously to ietf-languages at alvestrand.no <mailto:ietf-languages at alvestrand.no> but I don’t think it got through and don’t know why.

> On 26 Mar 2015, at 17:02, Luc Pardon <lucp at skopos.be <mailto:lucp at skopos.be>> wrote:
> 
> On 26-03-15 17:40, Shawn Steele wrote:
>> Some of that has been happening.  The way to be independent would be to attach it to pt and let users do as they will.  Perhaps some of these other countries have "early adopters" that would like to experiment with the proposal before it's ratified?
> 
> Probably, and there is even more. I read [1] that the "Novas da Galiza"
> (in Galicia, Spain) adopted ao1990 in january 2011 already. They have a
> website [2] so they'd really need to tag it properly (currently they don't).
> 
> The proper way to help them would be to add "Prefix: glc" to ao1990.
> 
> What I'm trying to say: if even "Prefix: pt" would be too restrictive to
> serve today's adopters, it's yet another reason to not go for "Prefix:
> pt-PT".
> 
> Luc Pardon
> 
> [1] https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acordo_Ortogr%C3%A1fico_de_1990 <https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acordo_Ortogr%C3%A1fico_de_1990>
> 
> [2] http://www.novasgz.com/ <http://www.novasgz.com/>



> On 10 Apr 2015, at 20:53, Luc Pardon <lucp at skopos.be <mailto:lucp at skopos.be>> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On 10-04-15 17:51, Michael Everson wrote:
> 
>> I am satisfied with 
>> 
>> abl1943:  pt
>> ao1990:   pt-BR, pt-CV, pt-PT
>> 
>> But despite saying they could live with the latter, some people offered more grumblings. For my part I was not convinced by them. 
>> 
> 
>  Why are you not convinced?
> 
>  You raised some concerns and asked that they be addressed. That is
> fair. So people "offered grumblings" and all you have to say is "I am
> not convinced, period". Please elaborate.
> 
> 
>  To re-iterate my "grumblings" :
> 
>  1. There is no evidence whatsoever that regional variants of ao1990 do
> exist. There are only assumptions and guesses. This is not enough to
> justify the narrowing of the original request down from "Prefix: pt".
> 
> 
>  2. The AO1990 was designed by Portuguese-speaking linguists for use
> all over the world.
> 
>  Following that logic, it must be "Prefix: pt".
> 
>  It wouldn't be a spelling reform if there weren't any opponents, but
> it is not the business of this list to take sides. It is also not the
> business of this list to try and track the progress of the reform.
> 
> 
>  3. Narrowing to only the countries that ratified AO1990 is arbitrary
> and makes no sense.
> 
>  It is arbitrary because this particular convention happens to be
> implemented as an international agreement between multiple governments.
> Most spelling conventions are not.
> 
>  It makes no sense because a spelling convention can be used without
> being ratified, there is simply no connection between the two.
> 
> 
>  4. Narrowing in the way we do it here is most illogical as well.
> 
>  * For ao1990, we narrow to three countries out of the nine where
> Portuguese is an official language.
> 
>  * For oxendict, we are about to widen it from "en-GB" to "en" because
> there is anecdotal evidence for "en-IE". But aren't there about sixty
> countries where English is an official language?
> 
>  So two out of sixty and we widen it in case of English, three out of
> nine and we narrow it in case of Portuguese. Where is the logic here?
> 
> 
>  5. Actually, if the subtag must be narrowed to the countries that
> ratified the AO1990, there should be seven prefixes, not three.
> 
>  According to the Portuguese Wikipedia article, the countries that
> ratified the AO1990 are:
> 
>    Brazil / Cabo Verde / Guinea-Bissau / Mozambique / Portugal / São
> Tomé and Príncipe / East Timor.
> 
>    That leaves only Angola and Macau, where the situation is not clear
> to me.
> 
>    The Wikipedia article currently says that Angola requested a
> three-year moratorium for ratification, "to expire in 2013", and that
> Macau intends to adopt the AO1990 "by the end of 2012".
> 
>    We are 2015 now. Clearly we're looking at outdated information.
> 
>    We could of course find out what the current situation is, but
> wouldn't it be easier to stick to plain "pt" instead?
> 
> 
> 
>   6. To summarize: please add one to the number of people that are of
> the opinion that ao1990 should be registered with "Prefix: pt".
> 
> 
>   Luc Pardon
> 
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