[ietf-provreg] Re: EPP Extensions for IDN

[Edward Lewis <Ed.Lewis@Neustar.biz>]

At 11:41 -0700 4/5/07, Ted Hardie wrote:

>Hmm, the Wade-Giles transliteration for Zhong is Chung, so I would 
>say that the
>pinyin transliteration Zhongshan maps to the Wade-Giles transliteration
>Chungshan.

Thanks, Ted.  I think my mistake was faulty memory of the 
Cheong/Chung on the road signs, but I wasn't aware of "Wade-Giles" 
name of the transliteration approach. (I knew there was something in 
use, but hadn't learned of it by name yet.)

>I suspect your expert was simplifying this for you.  Equivalent looking won't
>work by itself, as there are code points that look equivalent and are valid
>Unicode, but are generally excluded.  I think your expert was trying to get
>at the idea that they consider the ideographs distinct from any
>transliteration, but may treat ideographs as equivalent if they see one as
>a variant of the other (see 3473 for the language variant table version of
>  this idea).

I think maybe it was my fault.  BTW, when I used "we" I am not sure I 
am speaking for my registry's policies or a community of researcher's 
policies, just to clear this up.  I think "we" would equate both the 
simplified and traditional Chinese strings for Tokyo even though they 
do not look the same, but not include the transliterations.  So, 
yeah, it's not just equivalent looking, I was over simplifying.

>In general, pronunciation is a very large rathole, as there are multiple
>dialects and things that sound the same will vary from dialect to dialect.

Yes, that is something I had been neglecting...Cantonese, etc.  I 
have only spent time trying to learn Mandarin and thus keep 
forgetting about the other Chinese dialects.

It's really humbling to travel through regions and realize the 
enormity of the IDN issue.  At APRICOT in Bali, talking to a tour 
guide was really enlightening - they know the local language 
(Balinese), the national language (Indonesian), and then the language 
of their customers - which is not just English (the usual language of 
business).  He said that many islands had a local dialect but you had 
to learn the national language in school.

Every time you think you are making headway into understanding more 
forms of human communication, there seem to be a bijillion dialects 
and transliterations lurking around the next corner.

-- 
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Edward Lewis                                                +1-571-434-5468
NeuStar

Sarcasm doesn't scale.