Revised request: Japanese transliteration variants

[Doug Ewell]

Randy Presuhn <randy underscore presuhn at mindspring dot com> wrote:

> If the intent is that the variant subtag's meaning would be "any of 
> the romanizations known as Hepburn" then, regardless whether the other 
> subtags are registered, I'd like the description to make that clear. 
> Just omitting the "modified" or "revised" qualifier doesn't really 
> accomplish that - something more explicit would be helpful.

We registered 'pinyin' last year with the relatively general Description 
field "Pinyin romanization" under the premise that it could be used for 
Hanyu Pinyin, Tongyong Pinyin, or Tibetan Pinyin (a decision which I 
know you and others opposed, but it was upheld by the Reviewer).  The 
intent was not "any romanization known as 'pinyin'," but rather "any 
romanization that follows the general Pinyin model," thus including 
Tongyong and Tibetan but excluding Wade-Giles.

I don't see why this strategy would not work for Hepburn as well, or why 
doing something different would achieve anything but inconsistency.  The 
subtag 'hepburn' as proposed doesn't strictly mean "any romanization 
known as Hepburn," but rather "any romanization that follows the general 
Hepburn model," thus including the three varieties of Hepburn we have 
discussed but excluding Kunrei-shiki and Nihon-shiki.

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