pinyin (and wadegile) request has gotten derailed

Wed Sep 17 15:01:36 CEST 2008

There is nothing in BCP47 that prevents registration of overlapping subtags,
so it is (as you said) allowed.
Mark

On Wed, Sep 17, 2008 at 2:29 PM, Broome, Karen <Karen_Broome at spe.sony.com>wrote:

> I think this is a very key point and one on which BCP 47 may not provide a
> clear answer. Are overlapping tag semantics allowed?
>
> To use an example from an earlier request, if one user needed a specific
> tag for the 1959 "academy" variant of Belarusian and another user required
> the Academy variant with no respect to the various revisions, could both
> tags be assigned?   I think your analogy with respect to Mark Twain is quite
> relevant and I believe this is why the last few requests have been delayed.
> Attempting to come up with a perfect mutually exclusive tagging mechanism
> for variants may ultimately not serve the needs of users.
>
> I think we need to accept that overlapping semantics in variant tags is
> allowed while still keeping an eye out for tags which can be shared across
> languages.
>
> Regards,
>
> Karen Broome
>
> ________________________________________
> From: ietf-languages-bounces at alvestrand.no [
> ietf-languages-bounces at alvestrand.no] On Behalf Of Phillips, Addison [
> addison at amazon.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, September 16, 2008 4:33 PM
> To: CE Whitehead; ietf-languages at iana.org
> Subject: RE: pinyin (and wadegile) request has gotten derailed
>
> I note that Mark has requested a subtag for explicitly Hanyu Pinyin and not
> for any other kind of Pinyin. While it is possible for Hanyu (other)
> pinyin's to be included into a single subtag, I can't tell if that would
> meet Mark's requirements or not. I would be very astonished and not all that
> well served if I were to request a subtag 'twain' [to identify the dialect
> usage of writer Mark Twain] and got instead '1880' [to identify dialectical
> usages of late-19th-Century American writers] instead. Yes, one encompasses
> the other. But that doesn't necessarily meet the requirements I am trying to
> address, and, in this case, which we, as a group, might not fully know.
>
> Mark, as the requester, do you have an opinion or requirements related to
> this?
>
> Addison
>
> Addison Phillips
> Globalization Architect -- Lab126
>
> Internationalization is not a feature.
> It is an architecture.
>
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: ietf-languages-bounces at alvestrand.no [mailto:ietf-languages-
> > bounces at alvestrand.no] On Behalf Of CE Whitehead
> > Sent: Tuesday, September 16, 2008 4:08 PM
> > To: ietf-languages at iana.org
> > Subject: pinyin (and wadegile) request has gotten derailed
> >
> >
> > Hi, John, Randy, others:
> > Thanks for the information; I think I'm agreed with John here that
> > Cantonese Pinyin should not be included in the subtag [pinyin] but
> > that Tibetan Pinyin can be--and optionally so can Tongyong Pinyin.
> >
> > --C. E. Whitehead
> > cewcathar at hotmail.com
> >
> > John Cowan cowan at ccil.org
> > Tue Sep 16 15:05:27 CEST 2008
> >
> > > Randy Presuhn scripsit:
> >
> > >>>  1.  How different is the Tongyong Pinyin romanization (the
> > alternate
> > >>> Taiwanese romanization) of Mandarin from the Hanyu Pinyin
> > romanization
> > >>> of Mandarin?
> > >>
> > >> About as different as Pinyin and Wade-Gile.
> >
> > > Quantitatively, no.  Of the 412 Modern Standard Mandarin
> > syllables
> > > (disregarding tone), Hanyu Pinyin and Tongyong Pinyin differ in
> > the
> > > spelling of only 81 of them, whereas HYPY and Wade-Giles differ
> > in the
> > > spelling of 270 of them.  The only things that TYPY and WG have
> > in common
> > > are that they don't have the features, peculiar to HYPY, of
> > separating
> > > the alveolopalatals by writing different initials and of eliding
> > central
> > > vowels in certain triphthong rhymes.
> >
> > Thanks for the info!
> >
> > >>> 2.  And how different is Tibetan Pinyin from Hanyu Pinyin?
> >
> > > By contrast, Tibetan Pinyin is as like HYPY as the nature of
> > Tibetan
> > > will allow it to be.
> > That was my understanding
> > >> I see no problem with having to use a meta-content description
> > tag
> > >> to distinguish Tibetan from Hanyu pinyin until [cmn] and other
> > codes
> > >> become available)
> >
> > > I don't see what 'cmn' has to do with it.  Tibetan is in no way
> > part of 'zh'.
> > My mistake--I was thinking of Tongyong Pinyin which is a part of
> > [zh] but [cmn] won't help there either!
> > > The whole point of language tagging is distinguishing languages
> > and
> > > their important variants.  To do things which would obscure the
> > > distinction between two indisputably distinct languages would be
> > > counterproductive.
> >
> > > The various Soviet Turkic languages are also indisputably
> > distinct,
> > > but we managed to assign a single tag to cover the Jangalif
> > orthography
> > > for all of them.
> > That's the example I thought of.
> > >> (Alas, since Tongyong Pinyin and Hanyu Pinyin are both for
> > Mandarin,
> > >> ISO 639-3 codes will not help to distinguish these two if they
> > need
> > >> to be distinguished with something other than a description in a
> > >> meta tag.  That's the only problem I can foresee with lumping
> > the
> > >> two together for now.)
> > >
> > > This is a strong argument for *not* merging the two.
> >
> > The obvious tactic is zh-(Latn)-TW-pinyin vs. zh-(Latn)-CN-pinyin.
> > Admittedly, zh-TW has been used to mean zh-Hant in the past, but
> > this
> > is a truly appropriate use of TW for the orthography specific to
> > Taiwan.
> >
> > This is problematic though as both Hanyu Pinyin and Tongyong Pinyin
> > seem to be used in Taiwan--but it would serve to distinguish the
> > two official orthographies.
> >
> > Another option I thought of:
> >
> >
> > [pinynprc]
> >
> > [pinyntwn]
> >
> > or [pinyntai]
> >
> > but these are totally obscure and non-transparent; however an
> > option is t o use [pinyin] for all similar Romanizations used in
> > the People's Republic of China and use some other name (such as
> > [tongyong]?) for the other variety.
> >
> > >> Reading online I understand that Cantonese Pinyin is quite
> > distant
> > >> (correct me if I'm wrong) from Hanyu Pinyin --
> > >
> > > Yes.
> >
> > > I agree.  This should not be tagged with the wide-scope 'pinyin'
> > subtag,
> > > although I suppose it sometimes will be.
> > Thanks for the reply; agreed!
> > --
> > > John Cowan   cowan at ccil.org    http://ccil.org/~cowan
> > _______________________________________________
> > Ietf-languages mailing list
> > Ietf-languages at alvestrand.no
> > http://www.alvestrand.no/mailman/listinfo/ietf-languages
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