Phonetic orthographies

[Michael Everson]

At 10:23 +0700 2006-11-22, Martin Hosken wrote:

>These universal systems are scripts/script variants, call them what you
>will.

These universal systems are orthographies of the Latin script; they 
are not independent scripts by any of our definitions. They may use 
specialized characters, but that makes them no less Latin.

>I don't really mind where one draws the line, but I do want to know 
>how to tag stuff that has been written using them. Please help.

I have tried to help, Martin!

We have seen orthography subtags before. We have them for German. I 
have proposed them for polytonic and monotonic Greek. And I proposed 
a whole set:

fonipa International Phonetic Alphabet
fonupa Uralic Phonetic Alphabet
fonweb Websters phonetic respelling (i-macron = [aj] etc)
fonami Americanist phonetic tradition
fonlep Lepsius' Standard Alphabet
fonmal Landsmaalalfabetet.
fondan Danish dialect alphabet
fornor Norwegian dialect alphabet

>As SIL starts to get its act together in this area, we would really 
>value your input on how you want us to tag our data. The danger I 
>fear is that the need to tag will precede the knowledge of how to 
>tag and people will just make things up and we'll have a retagging 
>nightmare on our hands.

I believe that it is possible to define orthography subtags precisely 
enough to be able to assist SIL and others who need to tag phonetic 
orthography.
-- 
Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com