Re: Pinyin

["Randy Presuhn" <[e-mail]>]

Hi -

> From: "CE Whitehead" <[e-mail]>
> To: <[e-mail]>
> Sent: Saturday, September 27, 2008 8:01 AM
> Subject: Re: Pinyin
...
> I can see that Romanizations of Mandarin Chinese will be the most
> important in terms of the numbers of people they reach, but looking 
> at the characters (sorry for my misuse of the term) in each orthography,
> I did not see enough differences (though I am not an expert) to warrant
> not including the Pinyin Romanizations of Tibetan and also the Pinyin
> Romanization of Mandarin that is called Tongyong (the big trick is
> distinguishing Tongyong from Hanyu though--but my guess is most
> people who can read one can read the other so is differentiating
> these that important?).
...

Wow.  I cannot believe that I am reading this on the mailing
list that agreed to distinguish -tarask and "academic" Belarusian,
on the mailing list that maintains (correctly) that there are real
uses cases where the differences between en-US and en-CA
matter.  While I might have dismissed earlier claims of a double-
standard as hyperbole, I'm not so sure now.

I *might* be persuaded to support "re-use" of the subtag with multiple
prefixes *iff* each registration request spelled out exactly what
orthography was intended in each case (an actual reference,
not just and arm-waving "using the principles of Hanyu Pinyin").

But I strenuously object to lumping things on the claim that "most
people who can read one can read the other," particularly since
my own experience with Hanyu Pinyin does not support such
a claim in the least.  At the very least, I though we had gotten
past the idea that there was any reason to lump Tongyong and
Hanyu Pinyin together.

Randy