LANGUAGE SUBTAG REGISTRATION FORM: USSR Latin (ussrlatn)

["Reshat Sabiq (Reşat)"]

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Michael Everson yazmış:
> At 19:47 -0400 2006-10-21, John Cowan wrote:
>> Michael Everson scripsit:
>>
>>>  RFC 4646 doesn't encode "alphabets". It seems to me that tt-Latn is
>>>  already available to describe Tatar in Latin script.
>>
>> The intention here is to register a variant subtag for a particular Latin
>> orthography of Tatar.
>
> Does this differ from any other Latin orthography of Tatar?
Yes, Tatar and most of the other languages in the list don't in general
use, neither are there any plans on using, 1930s alphabets. Primarily
because they have artificial characters that most European language stay
away from. In fact, most of those artificial characters aren't used in
any other Latin alphabet. Kazakhstan is the next country considering
transition of Kazakh (Qazaq) language to Latin, and 1930s alphabet isn't
even being mentioned, from what i've read.
Also, John appears to have touched on one aspect (multiple Latin
orthographies) in reply to Mark's email, but i should also draw
attention that while Tatar was the first thing on my mind, the alphabet
engineering was actually applied to all Turkic languages, based on a
core unified alphabet, and most other non-Turkic languages, not
necessarily following the core unified alphabet. Therefore, this variant
subtag applies to, say, Azeri as well.
az-ussrlatn:	Birlәşdirilmiş Jeni (1930larda) Türk Әlifbasь
az-Latn, or az:	Birlәşdirilmiş Yeni (1930larda) Türk Әlifbası
Here's one quote on the subject:
http://www.oxuscom.com/lang-policy.htm
The next step in alphabet reform came at the 1926 Baku (Azerbaijan)
Turkological Congress, which proposed the adoption of the Latin script
for all Turkic languages in the USSR. By 1930, the Arabic script had
been replaced by the Birlashdirilmish yangi Turk alifbesi (New Unified
Turkic alphabet). By 1935, a total of seventy Soviet languages (not all
of them Turkic), representing 36 million people, were being written in
the Latin alphabet, modified by diacritics where needed.
> Can it be
> guaranteed that "ussrlatn" applies equally and without variation to all
> of the languages listed?
As i tried to indicate, that alphabet was pushed down from Moscow and
approved by a conference as a common core (arguably, the main interest
was to get away from Arabic, although there was allegedly some work,
with a couple of Latin alphabets suggested, for the Russian language
itself). Individual languages, if needed, usually added 1-to-3 letters.
Although in mid-1930s, Uzbek was reformed such that it was made to look
more similar to Persian, and so several letters were removed from the
official initial version. The wiki reference given links to an article
in Russian, from 1936, which under item 5. says, in particular:
"Unification of the alphabets consists exactly of universal usage of the
same letter for the same phoneme; whereas for peculiar phonemes of a
given languages peculiar letters are used. Some letters can be shared by
all alphabets, if they designate phonemes used in all languages; other
letters can be shared by 2, 3, 10 or more alphabets; finally, it's
possible that some letter is only used in 1 alphabet, if the given
phoneme is not encountered elsewhere."

> Ach, this is waaaaaay underspecified. I am totally unimpressed with the
> two Wikipedia citations, and indeed, until two of the three (important
> and) relevant books in my OWN library are mentioned in a bibliography
> regarding this, I am disinclined to consider approval.
Well, the above two sources should provide some info for those interested:
http://www.oxuscom.com/lang-policy.htm
http://www2.unil.ch/slav/ling/textes/GRANDE-34/Grande34.html
And here's one book that discusses this matter with a focus on Uzbek
language, which it says, IIRC, didn't even exist until around late 1920s:
http://books.google.com/books?id=Z0-2R51tzi0C&pg=PA347&lpg=PP15&dq=Unified+%22Turkic+alphabet%22+conference+in+Baku+1926&psp=9&sig=IvjWdo9fSY3xmG-6Ru_wGEgxoNw

I know it's confusing. I'm born into this mess, and i'm trying to
untangle it myself. I don't envy your folks plight trying to figure it
out, but i hope you at least try.

Thanks.
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