LANGUAGE SUBTAG REGISTRATION FORM (R4): pinyin

Doug Ewell doug at ewellic.org
Tue Sep 9 14:55:41 CEST 2008


Kent Karlsson <kent dot karlsson14 at comhem dot se> wrote:

> But I note that the word "pinyin" may be unfortunate for this, since 
> that word is used (with varying degrees of commonality) to several 
> romanisations (including Wade-Giles) of different languages.

Using the word "Pinyin" to mean Wade-Giles would be a huge mistake in 
terminology.  Even though "pinyin" in Chinese means "alphabet" (as John 
has told us often), in the field of Chinese romanizations "Pinyin" and 
"Wade-Giles" are very much used in contrast to each other.  I am no 
expert in this field and even I know that.

The question of whether "Pinyin" by itself is commonly used to refer to 
other romanizations, especially those called "Something-Else Pinyin" as 
opposed to "Hanyu Pinyin," is really at the heart of the divide between 
Michael's viewpoint and Randy's (et al.) viewpoint.

--
Doug Ewell  *  Thornton, Colorado, USA  *  RFC 4645  *  UTN #14
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