Re: [Ietf-languages] Language tag for Han pinyin

[Richard Wordingham <[e-mail]>]

On Fri, 27 May 2022 19:55:37 -0400
John Cowan <[e-mail]> wrote:

> On Fri, May 27, 2022 at 6:26 PM Richard Wordingham
> <richard.wordingham= [e-mail]> wrote:  
> 
> In accordance with BCP 47, is the complete tag "cmn-Latn-pinyin"
> > supposed to be suitable for Mandarin in Han pinyin?  
> 
> 
> Yes, that is suitable.
> 
> > My qualm is that
> > the variant tag should have prefix "zh-Latn" when used for Chinese,
> >  
> 
> Prefixes associated with a variant subtag are permissive and
> informative only.
> 
> which suggests, contrary to other recommendations, that one should
> > rather use "zh-cmn-Latn-pinyin".  Do we perhaps need to add another
> > prefix to this and similar variants?
> >  
> 
> We could add "cmn" and "cmn-Latn" as prefixes, yes, but we are not
> required to do so.

Indeed, let us encourage the rejection of "cmn-pinyin" with responses
such as the following at
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:Grease_pit/2022/June#Transliteration_Systems_in_Etymologies_2:

"Checking IANA's list and what they list as the prefix, the correct
codes would be zh-Latn-pinyin, zh-Latn-wadegile and zh-Latn-tongyong."

(This reply is by the English Wiktionary user TheKnightWho and is the
last dated 22 June 2022 UTC.)

Alternatively, we are encouraging the use of variant tags in
environments where they are not properly defined.

Richard.