Re: [Ietf-languages] Proposal for variant language subtags for Pe̍h-ōe-jī romanization for Minnan (nan)

[Doug Ewell <[e-mail]>]

Winston Sung wrote:

> Update:
>
> Description: Pe̍h-ōe-jī orthography / romanization
> Comments: The subtag represents Pe̍h-ōe-jī orthography / romanization
> for Minnan.

The Comments field doesn’t add any information beyond the Description (the proposed Prefix is "nan-Latn", i.e. Min Nan Chinese in Latin script), and hence I suggest removing it. The same was true for the original proposal for this subtag.

The corresponding Comments field for the 'tailo' proposal does add some information (“in 2006 by Ministry of Education”), so it makes sense to keep that. But it should probably say “created” or “approved” or “promulgated” in 2006, whichever is appropriate, and it should specify *what* Ministry of Education is involved (presumably Taiwan’s).

Note also that the Description for 'nan' in the Registry (after ISO 639-3) is “Min Nan Chinese,” and so adding a comment to the Registry that spells this “Minnan” is perhaps not ideal anyway.

I can create and post complete, revised registration forms for these two proposals, along with the proposed records which we need anyway (although this doesn’t seem to be stated explicitly in Section 3.5). But I still would like to hear from the Reviewer and others about registering variants like this. What distinguishes romanizations that get variant subtags from those that have to settle for CLDR encoding via Extension T? How do we quantify that, say, Pe̍h-ōe-jī is an “orthography” for everyday use while “mns” for Mongolian is not? Is there another criterion?

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Doug Ewell, CC, ALB | Lakewood, CO, US | ewellic.org