Proposed records and registration forms for Japanese variants

[Doug Ewell]

Here are the proposed records and registration forms for the four 
variant subtags requested by Frank Bennett for romanizations of 
Japanese.  These can be submitted to IANA a week from now, provided all 
reviewers find them acceptable.

I removed the hyphen from "ISO-3602" and the trailing period in Frank's 
proposed Description fields.  Other than that, there are only very minor 
formatting changes, such as fitting all lines into 72 columns.  Please 
let me know on-list if you have any questions or find problems.

===

LANGUAGE SUBTAG MODIFICATION
File-Date: 2009-10-01
%%
Type: variant
Subtag: hepburn
Description: Hepburn romanization
Added: 2009-10-01
Prefix: ja-Latn
%%

===

LANGUAGE SUBTAG REGISTRATION FORM

1. Name of requester: Frank Bennett
2. E-mail address of requester: bennett at law.nagoya-u.ac.jp
3. Record Requested:

    Type: variant
    Subtag: hepburn
    Description: Hepburn romanization
    Prefix: ja-Latn

4. Intended meaning of the subtag:

    Indicates that the target content is Japanese text, romanized using
    a method derived from that first devised by the Society for the
    Romanization of the Japanese Alphabet in 1885, and popularized
    through the publication of a Japanese dictionary by J.C. Hepburn
    in 1886.

    The common characteristic of Hepburn romanization in its many
    variants, apart from the name, is an emphasis on approximating
    Japanese _pronunciation_ using English or European spelling
    conventions.  Hepburn romanization does not attempt to parallel
    or transcribe the Japanese logographic scripts (hiragana or
    katakana).

5. Reference to published description of the language (book or article):

    Primary
         J.C.Hepburn, A Japanese-English and English-Japanese
         Dictionary, 3rd ed., 1886.
             http://www.halcat.com/roomazi/doc/hep3.html

         Revised Hepburn: ALA-LC Romanization Tables (available for
         download)
             http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/roman.html

     Secondary
         http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hepburn_romanization
         http://www.hadamitzky.de/english/lp_romanization_sys.htm
         http://www.kanji.org/cjk/samples/jnamevar.htm

6. Any other relevant information:

    One of the reasons for the large variety and lack of discipline in
    Japanese romanization schemes is the simplicity of Japanese
    phonetics.  For a given Japanese word, there will be several more
    or less obvious ways of transliterating it into Latin characters.
    All such schemes lose such a large amount of information when
    compared with the original text that it is difficult to make a
    persuasive argument that one scheme is significantly better than
    another.

    The problem of information loss is particularly severe in the case
    of Japanese.  Whereas in Chinese, the Han characters each have
    particular, fixed pronunciations, in Japanese these often have
    multiple readings.  This, together with a limited syllabary,
    results in a crowded namespace with many homonyms.  The result is
    an emphasis on visual form in much discourse; people in
    conversation can often be heard to describe the Han characters of
    particular words to one another for clarity (i.e.  "kome-hen no
    seikou", meaning "the word pronounced 'seikou' that starts with a
    character containing the 'rice' radical").

    The extremely loose connection between the roman transliterated
    form of a text and its original form has meant that romanized
    script is used only for very short phrases, where the intended
    meaning is often clear from the context, or in combination with
    a translation (as in many academic citation systems), where the
    translation provides a hint of the meaning of the transliterated
    phrase.  In both cases, variances in the transliteration do not
    seriously impede readability, and therefore, both by intention
    and by accident, they have proliferated.

    By the same token, for many tagging purposes, identifying text as
    "Hepburn romanization" will be sufficient, and more precise
    description would be counter-productive (because most members of
    the population are indifferent to the small differences between
    the variants).  If for particular purposes a need arises to tag
    specific, well-defined subvariants of Hepburn, they can be added
    in future.

===

LANGUAGE SUBTAG MODIFICATION
File-Date: 2009-10-01
%%
Type: variant
Subtag: heploc
Description: Hepburn romanization, Library of Congress method
Added: 2009-10-01
Prefix: ja-Latn-hepburn
%%

===

LANGUAGE SUBTAG REGISTRATION FORM

1. Name of requester: Frank Bennett
2. E-mail address of requester: bennett at law.nagoya-u.ac.jp
3. Record Requested:

    Type: variant
    Subtag: heploc
    Description: Hepburn romanization, Library of Congress method
    Prefix: ja-Latn-hepburn

4. Intended meaning of the subtag:

    Indicates that the target content is Japanese text, romanized using
    the specific rules defined in the Romanization Tables published
    by the American Library Association and the US Library of Congress.

5. Reference to published description of the language (book or article):

    Primary
         ALA-LC Romanization Tables (available for download)
             http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/roman.html

    Secondary
         http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hepburn_romanization

6. Any other relevant information:

    While, like other Hepburn variants, this method is not an
    officially recognized standard, it is widely used, defined by
    a recognized authority, and suitable for use where a uniform
    method of romanization that well approximates Japanese
    pronunciation is required.

===

LANGUAGE SUBTAG MODIFICATION
File-Date: 2009-10-01
%%
Type: variant
Subtag: kunrei
Description: Kunrei-shiki romanization, as defined in ISO 3602
Added: 2009-10-01
Prefix: ja-Latn
%%

===

LANGUAGE SUBTAG REGISTRATION FORM

1. Name of requester: Frank Bennett
2. E-mail address of requester: bennett at law.nagoya-u.ac.jp
3. Record Requested:

    Type: variant
    Subtag: kunrei
    Description: Kunrei-shiki romanization, as defined in ISO 3602
    Prefix: ja-Latn

4. Intended meaning of the subtag:

    Indicates that the target content is Japanese text, romanized using
    the method defined in ISO 3602.

5. Reference to published description of the language (book or article):

    Primary
        ISO 3602 (available for purchase)
            http://www.iso.org/iso/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=9029

    Secondary
        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kunrei-shiki_romanization

6. Any other relevant information:

    Kunrei-shiki ("kunrei-style") romanization is taught in Japanese
    schools, and is more accessible (for _writing_ purposes) to native
    speakers of Japanese, because the form to be used in romanization
    does not depend on knowledge of English spelling conventions, but
    is instead derived in a systematic fashion from the Japanese
    logographic script used to express pronunciations natively.

===

LANGUAGE SUBTAG MODIFICATION
File-Date: 2009-10-01
%%
Type: variant
Subtag: nihon
Description: Nihon-shiki romanization, as defined in ISO 3602 Strict
Added: 2009-10-01
Prefix: ja-Latn
%%

===

LANGUAGE SUBTAG REGISTRATION FORM

1. Name of requester: Frank Bennett
2. E-mail address of requester: bennett at law.nagoya-u.ac.jp
3. Record Requested:

    Type: variant
    Subtag: nihon
    Description: Nihon-shiki romanization, as defined in ISO 3602 Strict
    Prefix: ja-Latn

4. Intended meaning of the subtag:

    Indicates that the target content is Japanese text, romanized using
    the method defined in ISO 3602 Strict.

5. Reference to published description of the language (book or article):

    Primary
        ISO 3602 (available for purchase)
            http://www.iso.org/iso/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=9029

    Secondary
        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nihon-shiki_romanization

6. Any other relevant information:

    Nihon-shiki ("nihon-style") romanization dates from 1885.  It
    offers a strict one-to-one correspondence between the Japanese
    phonetic syllabary and a nihon-shiki transliteration.  This
    rigidness makes it rather difficult for non-Japanese speakers to
    recognize the correct pronunciation of certain transliterated
    terms, but has the advantage that transliterations can be reversed
    to produce correct Japanese phonetic script.

--
Doug Ewell  |  Thornton, Colorado, USA  |  http://www.ewellic.org
RFC 5645, 4645, UTN #14  |  ietf-languages @ http://is.gd/2kf0s