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> Who’s mainly responsible for there to this day being no ISO standard for transliterating Cantonese (like Pinyin), and its conspicuous absence from Google Tran

> Who’s mainly responsible for there to this day being no ISO standard for transliterating Cantonese (like Pinyin), and its conspicuous absence from Google Translate (despite having 86 million speakers—consider that Translate supports, say, Welsh, Basque, Dhivehi, and many others that are spoken by fewer than even one million), is probably obvious. There's no ISO standard because there's no actual standard. Even just within Hong Kong there are multiple systems in use.

goblin89 3y ago
Let’s not mix cause and effect. There are multiple systems because there’s no standard, and there’s no standard because there’s strong opposing interest. Cantonese-speaking world would strictly benefit from this standardisation, lack of it impedes business and takes away from language’s legitimacy. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were attempts to introduce a standardised way of romanising Yue, but certain groups with many votes considered this national interest as they try to maintain authority across a very diverse set of people speaking different languages.
- yorwba 3y ago
  Can you point to a specific instance of a proposed ISO standard that was shot down by committee? Because otherwise the default explanation for why there's no ISO standard for Cantonese romanization is the same as why there's no ISO standard for romanizing Burmese, or Malaysian Jawi etc. There's little demand internationally for such a standard. And if the Hong Kong government's standard, or the Guangdong government's standard (this one presumably preferred on the Mainland) is officially blessed by ISO, would people currently using something else really switch just because of ISO?
  - goblin89 3y ago
    Myanmar, while spoken by fewer people than Yue, benefits from an official standard for romanization from its own government (not ISO), and Jawi is a dialect of a language spoken by fewer than a thousand people total. When saying “little demand internationally”, could you clarify what international demand was there for a standard for romanizing Mandarin and why that is somehow not applicable to Yue?
    - yorwba 3y ago
      > Myanmar, while spoken by fewer people than Yue, benefits from an official standard for romanization from its own government (not ISO) Said standard getting ignored by most Burmese people in favor of ad-hoc romanizations, similar to Cantonese speakers in Hong Kong and Guangdong mostly ignoring various standards published by their respective governments. > Jawi is a dialect of a language spoken by fewer than a thousand people total. Malaysian Jawi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jawi_script https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jawi_script is not a dialect, but an Arabic-derived writing system for Malay. While not all Malay speakers use it, it's certainly more than a few thousand. > what international demand was there for a standard for romanizing Mandarin and why that is somehow not applicable to Yue? Mandarin is an official language of the UN, whereas Yue isn't.
      - goblin89 3y ago
        We are discussing languages, not scripts. Standard being ignored by laypeople doesn’t make it any less useful in formal contexts sensitive to ambiguity.

goblin89 3y ago

Let’s not mix cause and effect. There are multiple systems because there’s no standard, and there’s no standard because there’s strong opposing interest. Cantonese-speaking world would strictly benefit from this standardisation, lack of it impedes business and takes away from language’s legitimacy. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were attempts to introduce a standardised way of romanising Yue, but certain groups with many votes considered this national interest as they try to maintain authority across a very diverse set of people speaking different languages.

yorwba 3y ago
Can you point to a specific instance of a proposed ISO standard that was shot down by committee? Because otherwise the default explanation for why there's no ISO standard for Cantonese romanization is the same as why there's no ISO standard for romanizing Burmese, or Malaysian Jawi etc. There's little demand internationally for such a standard. And if the Hong Kong government's standard, or the Guangdong government's standard (this one presumably preferred on the Mainland) is officially blessed by ISO, would people currently using something else really switch just because of ISO?
- goblin89 3y ago
  Myanmar, while spoken by fewer people than Yue, benefits from an official standard for romanization from its own government (not ISO), and Jawi is a dialect of a language spoken by fewer than a thousand people total. When saying “little demand internationally”, could you clarify what international demand was there for a standard for romanizing Mandarin and why that is somehow not applicable to Yue?
  - yorwba 3y ago
    > Myanmar, while spoken by fewer people than Yue, benefits from an official standard for romanization from its own government (not ISO) Said standard getting ignored by most Burmese people in favor of ad-hoc romanizations, similar to Cantonese speakers in Hong Kong and Guangdong mostly ignoring various standards published by their respective governments. > Jawi is a dialect of a language spoken by fewer than a thousand people total. Malaysian Jawi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jawi_script https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jawi_script is not a dialect, but an Arabic-derived writing system for Malay. While not all Malay speakers use it, it's certainly more than a few thousand. > what international demand was there for a standard for romanizing Mandarin and why that is somehow not applicable to Yue? Mandarin is an official language of the UN, whereas Yue isn't.
    - goblin89 3y ago
      We are discussing languages, not scripts. Standard being ignored by laypeople doesn’t make it any less useful in formal contexts sensitive to ambiguity.