[Ietf-languages] Re: Language Subtag Registration Form: variant 'basicltn'

[Doug Ewell <[e-mail]>]

I’d really like the Reviewer to weigh in on this request early.

This seems to me like either a distinction that is out of scope altogether for BCP 47, or one that would be adequately and properly covered by an Extension T tag such as “zh-Latn-pinyin-t-zh-d0-ascii” (I’m unsure whether the second ‘zh’ is necessary). It is more a matter of typography and convenience than language usage or variation.

Note that nothing in BCP 47 requires content tagged as ‘pinyin’ to be written exactly according to the Pinyin standard, accents and all, just as nothing requires content tagged as (say) English to be in correctly spelled, grammatically flawless English.

Note also that reducing Latin-script text to the Basic Latin range may consist of more than removal of accents, and different conventions exist for doing this. Decisions must be made on how to represent letters such as Æ and Œ; it is typical to substitute “AE” and “OE”, but some sources (including UNECE) use simply A and O. Likewise, there are different conventions for replacing Ð and Þ. The situation gets more complicated for source characters beyond Latin-1.

All of this means that a subtag to represent “the” conversion of Latin-script text to Basic Latin might be simultaneously “too much” and ”not enough.”

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