LANGUAGE SUBTAG REGISTRATION FORM (R4): pinyin

[David Starner]

On Tue, Sep 9, 2008 at 4:34 PM, Michael Everson <everson at evertype.com> wrote:
> Wade-Giles is not Pinyin. It does not derive from Pinyin orthographic
> conventions. Tibetan Pinyin and Tongyong Pinyin do, as do other uses of
> Latin in romanizations used in China for Sino-Tibetan and other languages.
> It is probable that Wade-Giles conventions were used for languages other
> than Mandarin, but the point is that we're looking to approve both
> "wadegile" and "pinyin" subtags here.
> I'm not convinced that these subtags should be restricted as has been
> proposed to zh- or zh-Latn.

If -pinyin isn't going to cover all orthographies denoted as pinyin,
which would include wēituǒmǎ pīnyīn, what is it going to cover? All
orthographies derived from Hanyu pinyin, no matter how different? For
some languages, that's going to tag multiple clearly distinct
orthographies with one tag. I'm not sure which orthographies would be
tagged -pinyin under your scheme, and I think if this goes ahead, the
form needs to be fixed to make it clear.

We could make an -encitv, for all those orthographies based on English
consonants and Italian vowels. I find that about as useful as the tag
offered here.