LANGUAGE SUBTAG REGISTRATION FORM: pinyin

[Randy Presuhn]

Hi -

> From: "Kent Karlsson" <kent.karlsson14 at comhem.se>
> To: <ietf-languages at iana.org>
> Sent: Sunday, August 03, 2008 3:06 AM
> Subject: RE: LANGUAGE SUBTAG REGISTRATION FORM: pinyin
...
> > As mentioned earlier, while Pinyin is used primarily and overwhelmingly 
> > for Mandarin Chinese, it does have use for other languages.
> 
> For instance Cantonese: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Cantonese_Pinyin.

This is *NOT* the same orthography.  It's not even terribly similar - it's
about like saying that English and Swedish share a common orthography.
The Pinyin in the registration request is optimized to the phonology
of Mandarin.  It only provides for four tones (+ neutral), and is consequently
ill-suited to languages like Cantonese that have more elaborate tone systems.

Randy