Re: "Fransin" simplified orthography for French

I fully agree with Doug.

Mark

On Mon, Feb 13, 2017 at 8:22 PM, Doug Ewell <[email protected]> wrote:

> Much of the discussion about this request seems to focus on whether the
> spelling reform is a "good" one, specifically whether it makes phonetic
> distinctions that are important in French.
>
> Although that is an interesting side topic for a group interested in
> languages, I hope any evaluation of the variant subtag request will not
> be based on that. It is not the Reviewer's or this group's job to decide
> whether Fransin or any other reformed orthography is a "good" system.
> Instead, we should be following RFC 5646, Section 2.2.5 ("Variant
> Subtags"), which says in its first sentence:
>
> "Variant subtags are used to indicate additional, well-recognized
> variations that define a language or its dialects that are not covered
> by other available subtags."
>
> We need to be sure we understand and agree on what "well-recognized"
> means, and the Reviewer should decide whether Fransin fits that
> description.
>
> I'll quote and paraphrase from the message Michael responded to, which
> was sent to an incorrect address ([email protected], with the 's'
> missing) and thus didn't make the list.
>
> Fransin is a completely new system (identified by Pierre as "version
> 1.0"), initiated in September 2016, supported by an IT company with a
> goal "to create and maintain... a community website" which allows
> "registered people" to collaborate on the development of the system.
> Eventually the company will provide machine-transcribed versions of
> French texts, beginning with Wikipedia, and will investigate localizing
> software into it, including "Fransin orthographic correctors for the
> various existing Operating Systems."
>
> Pierre claims that a published Wikipedia is necessary to meet these
> goals, but Wikipedia has informed him that he needs "an official
> language code for Fransin" before they will publish one.
>
> <quote>
> "In summary: we need a French-language transcription code corresponding
> to the Fransin ("ffs", "fs", etc.) The fransin is an evolutionary
> transcription of French whose definition and becoming will be managed by
> the community of people registered on the web site
> ‘www.fransin.org’. This website will be operated by our company
> VECTALIS at the beginning, but by a non-profitable company as soon as we
> consider that the project will be viable autonomously. The Fransin
> transcription will have the particularity of having nearly no writer
> (except our robot…) but a huge corpus available freely online (=
> Wikipedia + digitized and royalty-free French works already transcribed
> by our transcription robot).
>
> "We believe that 2-3 years of full availability of the Wikipedia-Fransin
> should allow us to see if this initiative finds an echo in the real word
> or not. If we do not find any audience, we will give up the Fransin
> project and its associated code."
> </quote>
>
> My opinions, with hat off, and as one contributor among many:
>
> This does not meet the criteria for a BCP 47 variant subtag. It is not
> an established or well-recognized system, but one invented a few months
> ago, which the creators hope will catch on (what Michael refers to as
> "aspirational").
>
> The fact that Fransin is not finished or "static" is not the problem;
> languages and even writing systems do change over time. The problem is
> that nobody is currently using it. It is a new project which is being
> given "2-3 years" to achieve some measure of success, like any corporate
> project, and the inventors are seeking an "official" code to satisfy
> Wikipedia's burden of proof of legitimacy.
>
> The agencies charged with maintaining ISO 639, 3166, and 4217 get
> requests like this every so often, to grant a code element for a new
> constructed language or micronation or cryptocurrency, often hoping the
> code element will imply endorsement of the entity by international
> authorities and will increase its public acceptance. As Michael pointed
> out, if public dissemination of the Fransin corpus is a goal, this could
> be achieved using Wikia or another hosting service, which doesn't
> require assignment of a standard code.
>
> The Reviewer and other list contributors may have other opinions, but
> whether the decision is to register a subtag for Fransin or not, it
> should be based on the RFC 5646 criteria, and not on whether we think it
> is a good solution or whether the creators need a stamp of approval in
> order to support their project.
>
> --
> Doug Ewell | Thornton, CO, US | ewellic.org
> _______________________________________________
> Ietf-languages mailing list
> [email protected]
> http://www.alvestrand.no/mailman/listinfo/ietf-languages
>

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