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<DIV><SPAN class=397104909-09092008><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2>I note
that you for "acad" want to micromanage that by introducing year numbers for
variations that, I gather, have quite small</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=397104909-09092008><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff
size=2>differences, </FONT></SPAN><SPAN class=397104909-09092008><FONT
face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2>whereas in the case of "pinyin" want to go in
the quite opposite direction, lumping several fairly different
romanisations</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=397104909-09092008><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2>into
one </FONT></SPAN><SPAN class=397104909-09092008><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff
size=2>variant subtag.</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=397104909-09092008><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff
size=2></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=397104909-09092008><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2>To
just say "a Latin romanisation of Chinese" in an IANA language tag, "zh-Latn"
suffices. Similarly, for "a Latin romanisation of</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=397104909-09092008><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff
size=2>Tibetan, "bo-Latn" suffices. Neither of which requires any new
registration.</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=397104909-09092008><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff
size=2></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=397104909-09092008><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2>But
the requests here was to be able to distinguish </FONT></SPAN><SPAN
class=397104909-09092008><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2>two Latin
romanisations of Mandarin, in particular, by registering a
variant</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=397104909-09092008><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2>subtag
</FONT></SPAN><SPAN class=397104909-09092008><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff
size=2>for each of the variants in question. </FONT></SPAN><SPAN
class=397104909-09092008><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2>But I note that
the word "pinyin" may be unfortunate </FONT></SPAN><SPAN
class=397104909-09092008><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2>for this, since
that word is used</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=397104909-09092008><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2>(with
</FONT></SPAN><SPAN class=397104909-09092008><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff
size=2>varying degrees of commonality) to several </FONT></SPAN><SPAN
class=397104909-09092008><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2>romanisations
(including Wade-Giles) of different </FONT></SPAN><SPAN
class=397104909-09092008><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2>languages. The
Wade-Giles</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=397104909-09092008><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff
size=2>romanisation appears to apply to several related </FONT></SPAN><SPAN
class=397104909-09092008><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2>languages
too.</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=397104909-09092008><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff
size=2></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=397104909-09092008> <FONT face=Arial
color=#0000ff size=2>/kent k</FONT></SPAN></DIV><BR>
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<FONT face=Tahoma size=2><B>From:</B> ietf-languages-bounces@alvestrand.no
[mailto:ietf-languages-bounces@alvestrand.no] <B>On Behalf Of </B>Michael
Everson<BR><B>Sent:</B> Tuesday, September 09, 2008 9:41 AM<BR><B>To:</B>
ietflang IETF Languages Discussion<BR><B>Subject:</B> LANGUAGE SUBTAG
REGISTRATION FORM (R4): pinyin<BR></FONT><BR></DIV>
<DIV></DIV>
<DIV>
<DIV>On 8 Sep 2008, at 17:15, Randy Presuhn wrote:</DIV><BR
class=Apple-interchange-newline>
<BLOCKQUOTE type="cite">
<DIV>The pinyin orthography is highly optimized for the phonology of
Mandarin Chinese. It would be terribly ill-suited for use with
Vietnamese, English, German, French, and Russian, to name just a few
languages for which the it lacks sufficient tone notation, vowel
distinctions, stress markers, or consonants.</DIV></BLOCKQUOTE>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV>But its orthographic conventions *are* used for other Sino-Tibetan
languages in China.</DIV><BR>
<BLOCKQUOTE type="cite">
<DIV>The registration request is for a specific orthography of a specific
language, which happens to reflect that language's phonology rather
well. It is not a general-purpose transcription mechanism, and we
shouldn't try to turn it into one.</DIV></BLOCKQUOTE>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV>The Chinese have already done so. It is analogous to UPA, which is for
the orthography of a set of related languages (Uralic ones). UPA might not be
well-suited to represent Hausa or Mandarin or Vietnamese. But that doesn't
mean that if someone had come asking to register "fonupa" with a Prefix
restricting it to Sami that it wouldn't be right to notice that it was used
with other languages as well.<SPAN class=Apple-style-span
style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: -1"></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV>I have a collection of Yi dictionaries. Some of them have Latin
transcriptions in the Sinological variant of IPA. Others are in a Pinyin-based
transcription. Should we have bopinyin, typinyin, yipinyin, and 40 others? I
don't believe so.</DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=Apple-style-span
style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: -1"><BR></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=Apple-style-span
style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: -1">Michael Everson * <A
href="http://www.evertype.com/">http://www.evertype.com</A></SPAN></DIV></DIV>
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