Esperanto orthography subtags

Michael Everson everson at evertype.com
Mon Feb 27 12:16:32 CET 2017


Well…

"Standard H-method for spelling Esperanto”
"Standard X-method for spelling Esperanto”

Is this the best description? These are fallback transliterations when non-Latin-1 characters are unavailable. The English Wikipedia (cited) calls it “H-system”. The subtags proposed are hmetodo and xmetodo. The Esperanto Wikipedia calls them H-sistemo at https://eo.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-sistemo and X-sistemo at https://eo.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-sistemo. Zamenhof devised the former, and the latter has been devised more recently. 

Evidently the first has an official name:

En la oficiala deklaro "Pri apartaj teknikaj bezonoj rilate al niaj alfabeto kaj ortografio" de la Akademio de Esperanto en Oficialaj Informoj numero 6 2007 01 21, la H-sistemo estas nomata "Fundamenta anstataŭa skribsistemo (ch, gh, hh, jh, sh, u)".

That’s “Fundamental replacement script”, which isn’t very informative and doesn’t specify the method, but then ŭ isn’t replaced by uh.

The Akademio de Esperanto admits the X-sistemo sort of apologetically because (I suppose) while it is less ambiguous than the H-sistemo, that was Zamenhof’s and so it should be “better”:

Nur kiam la cirkonstancoj ne permesas uzi la ĝustajn supersignojn, kaj kiam pro apartaj bezonoj la Fundamenta anstataŭa skribsistemo (ch, gh, hh, jh, sh, u) ne estas oportuna, oni povas anstataŭigi la supersignajn literojn per aliaj signoj aŭ signokombinoj.

That is, the Akademio approves the use of X-sistemo rather than H-sistemo only “when the circumstances do not permit the use of proper diacritics, and when due to a special need the h-system fixed in the Fundamento is not convenient"

So… do we need to describe either of these as “standard”? Perhaps:

"H-system orthographic fallback for spelling Esperanto”
"X-system  orthographic fallback for spelling Esperanto”

In any case hsistemo and xsistemo would seem to be the better subtags. 

Michael


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