Jesper Nørgaard / Vietnam: Saigon vs. Ha Noi. David Keegel / Theory file. Gwillim Law / Theory file. Vadim Vygonets / Saigon vs. Ha Noi and Jerusalem vs. Tel Aviv. Paul Eggert / Jerusalem vs. Tel Aviv. Gwillim Law / I think it's fine to put alternative place names into the comments, but I hope we'll resist making frequent changes to the zone names.
One of the TZ prescriptions is: "Use the most populous among locations in a country's time zone, e.g. prefer `Shanghai' to `Beijing'. Among locations with similar populations, pick the best-known location, e.g. prefer `Rome' to `Milan'." The rationale of the 11 Theory prescriptions is of course: The user has to be able to find the wanted timezone immediately. I am NOT proposing to change the Theory rules, but I wonder: population count, popularity, media exposure all change, a capital hardly or not. A capital is or should be known to everybody. Haven't we all had some kind of geography lessons, years or decades ago? If in a TZ application the end user is able to see the commented alternative names, then in some cases alternatives should be mentioned in the data files. If not, mentioning alternatives still could be useful to the developers of Windows, Macintosh and web derivatives of the TZ application.
Paul Eggert, Vadim Vygonets, Antoine Leca / China: Chongqing A recurring problem is that people inside and outside of China don't like the official pinyin transliteration. Most professional map makers however use pinyin. Officially (Peking University course) the q- sound is an aspirated voiceless affricate, with j- the unaspirated voiceless counterpart. In practice j- sounds more like the (voiced!) g- in English genuine and q- more like the ch- in English chew. How Chongqing is pronounced in Chongqing I do not know. What I do know is that Chongqing is the official pinyin transliteration. Chung is a British transliteration (Wade, 1867), indeed: tch'ong is the French EFEO (1902) transliteration, but k'ing is the French transliteration for pinyin qing, whereas ch'ing would be the British transliteration. I'll vote for pinyin Chongqing.
Antoine Leca / Cambodia: Phnum Penh There is a (Unicode) "Proposal for encoding the Khmer script", by Maurice Bauhahn, a proposal to ISO-IEC JTC1/SC2/WG2. This is not a Romanization proposal, but in this document I found a reference to: American Library Association - Library of Congress romanization tables: transliteration schemes for non-Roman scripts approved by the Library of Congress and the American Library Association, Randall K. Barry, ed. 1997, isbn 0844409405. Who has access to these tables? See also the ISO/TC46/SC2 working groups for international transliteration standards (http://www.elot.gr/tc46sc2/). I suggest: Phnom_Penh as zone name, Phnum Penh in comment.
Gwillim Law / Do not change established names unless they become ambiguous or shockingly incorrect. Yes, but established by whom? And what would you call shockingly incorrect? To some people it's shockingly incorrect to say Kirgizstan instead of Kyrgyzstan, but a certain influential publication or whoever 'established' an alternative transliteration. Where to draw the line? Vadim Vygonets / Kirgizstan BTW: Kyrgyz is not a Russian (Slavonic) language, but a Turkic language, and -i- and -y- indeed do sound different.
Paul Eggert / Hong Kong, Macao, Harbin, Urumqi, Kashgar. I'll vote for these as zone names; one could put more or less common or official alternatives in comments. Alternatives to Kashgar: Kaxgar, Kashi.
Oscar van Vlijmen 2000-09-27
<<On Wed, 27 Sep 2000 18:55:17 +0200, Oscar van Vlijmen <o.van.vlijmen@tip.nl> said:
I am NOT proposing to change the Theory rules, but I wonder: population count, popularity, media exposure all change, a capital hardly or not. A capital is or should be known to everybody. Haven't we all had some kind of geography lessons, years or decades ago?
Many time-zone regions do not have a `capital' of any sort. To give just one example, the time zone `America/Los_Angeles' has three `capitals': Sacramento, Salem, and Olympia. None of these are obvious choices. `America/Chicago' has even more possibilities. In both cases, choosing the largest city resolves the ambiguity. (Of course, neither one is particularly ``natural'' -- the legal names are ``Pacific'' and ``Central'', respectively.) -GAWollman
Garrett Wollman wrote:
Many time-zone regions do not have a `capital' of any sort. To give just one example, the time zone `America/Los_Angeles' has three `capitals': Sacramento, Salem, and Olympia. None of these are obvious choices. `America/Chicago' has even more possibilities. In both cases, choosing the largest city resolves the ambiguity. (Of course, neither one is particularly ``natural'' -- the legal names are ``Pacific'' and ``Central'', respectively.)
You were quicker than I with a reply. I was even going to use the same 'West Coast of North America Time'. By the way, there is also Vancouver (B.C. Canada), Yellowknife - the capital of the Yukon, and capital of the Mexican State of Baja Norte - Encenada, to add to that list. Also, keep in mind that "Central" and "Pacific" are not the official names of the timezones, they may be the official names in the USA, but you must consider Canada, Mexico, various parts of the Caribbean, Central America, and any coutnry in the mix that officially has two languages (i.e. Canada) in the mix just for the two examples you gave. This assumes they use exactly the same TZ rules, some parts do. There is no one official name for the set of rules, even if various places use the same name ("Eastern Time" and EST). As I understand it, this is one of the reasons the TZdata files uses city names. Someone said there is the rule: every country gets at least one entry. Is this implemented in practice? Every country including all small countries that share zones (like the Caribbean)? Does this apply to Canada? Are there really redundant entries for Pacific, Mountain, Central and Eastern for Canada? I thought only those locations with alternative TZ histories are listed under a different town/city name. Maybe that is why all of Canada would get its onw list, what with War Time and differing parliamentary history etc. -Paul -- Myriad Genetics: http://www.myriad.com/ Java FAQ: http://www.afu.com/javafaq.html (Section 9, Computer Dating)
<<On Wed, 27 Sep 2000 11:35:02 -0600, Paul Hill <phill@myriad.com> said:
Does this apply to Canada? Are there really redundant entries for Pacific, Mountain, Central and Eastern for Canada? I thought only those locations with alternative TZ histories are listed under a different town/city name. Maybe that is why all of Canada would get its onw list, what with War Time and differing parliamentary history etc.
Absolutely -- there are in fact 22 of them (according to zone.tab). Even just `Central' refers to eight distinct time zones: CA +4953-09709 America/Winnipeg Central Time - Manitoba & west Ontario CA +4843-09429 America/Rainy_River Central Time - Rainy River & Fort Frances, Ontario CA +6608-06544 America/Pangnirtung Central Time - Pangnirtung, Nunavut CA +6344-06828 America/Iqaluit Central Time - east Nunavut CA +6245-09210 America/Rankin_Inlet Central Time - central Nunavut CA +6903-10505 America/Cambridge_Bay Central Time - west Nunavut CA +5024-10439 America/Regina Central Standard Time - Saskatchewan - most locations CA +5017-10750 America/Swift_Current Central Standard Time - Saskatchewan - midwest -GAWollman
<<On Wed, 27 Sep 2000 11:35:02 -0600, Paul Hill <phill@myriad.com> said:
By the way, there is also Vancouver (B.C. Canada), Yellowknife - the capital of the Yukon, and capital of the Mexican State of Baja Norte - Encenada, to add to that list.
Those locations are not part of the America/Los_Angeles time zone. -GAWollman
At 11:35 -0600 2000-09-27, Paul Hill wrote:
By the way, there is also Vancouver (B.C. Canada), Yellowknife - the capital of the Yukon, and capital of the Mexican State of Baja Norte - Encenada, to add to that list.
Someone might have pointed this out already, but isn't the capital of B.C. Victoria (on the southern tip of Vancouver Island), and not Vancouver? --Alex _______________ Alex LIVINGSTON Macintosh and Lotus Notes Support / Information Technology (IT) Australian Graduate School of Management (AGSM) UNSW SYDNEY NSW 2052 / Australia Facsimile: +61 2 9931-9349 / Telephone: +61 2 9931-9264 Time : UTC+11---[last Mar. Sun.---UTC+10---[last Aug. Sun.---UTC+11--- At end of today, Wednesday, October 4, time since epoch (1-1-1 at 00:00:00) = 730397 days = 1999.75906418 average Gregorian years time until 3rd millennium, 21st century, 201st decade, 2001st year = 88 days = .24093582 average Gregorian years
Alex LIVINGSTON wrote:
At 11:35 -0600 2000-09-27, Paul Hill wrote:
By the way, there is also Vancouver (B.C. Canada), Yellowknife - the capital of the Yukon, and capital of the Mexican State of Baja Norte - Encenada, to add to that list.
Someone might have pointed this out already, but isn't the capital of B.C. Victoria (on the southern tip of Vancouver Island), and not Vancouver?
Vancouver is the biggest city in British Columbia --- but Victoria (on Vancouver Island) is the capital. Earl --
----------------------------------------------------------------------+ Earl Chew http://www.agilent.com | Agilent Technologies mailto:earl_chew@agilent.com | Advanced Networks Division Tel: +1 604 454 3411 | 2500-4710 Kingsway Fax: +1 604 454 3401 | Burnaby BC V5H 4M2 Canada | ----------------------------------------------------------------------+
Gwillim Law / Do not change established names unless they become ambiguous or shockingly incorrect. Yes, but established by whom?
When I said "established names", I was referring to the names that currently exist in the tz archive. They are "established" because people all over the world have downloaded them, which, in turn, is the reason I would like to avoid changing them.
And what would you call shockingly incorrect?
"Shockingly incorrect" was intentionally left undefined. The purpose of that phrase is to allow the maintainers of the tz archive to decline to change a zone name in most circumstances without doing a survey of world literature to justify the decision. Not that I expect my phrasing to be adopted verbatim, of course. It's just a suggestion. Yours, Gwillim Law
Quoth Oscar van Vlijmen on Wed, Sep 27, 2000:
Paul Eggert, Vadim Vygonets, Antoine Leca / China: Chongqing Officially (Peking University course) the q- sound is an aspirated voiceless affricate, with j- the unaspirated voiceless counterpart. In practice j- sounds more like the (voiced!) g- in English genuine and q- more like the ch- in English chew. How Chongqing is pronounced in Chongqing I do not know.
Sounds like "Tsongtsing" to me. In the Chongqing dialect. In Mandarin it sounds very much like "Tsungjing", where 'Ts' is slightly voiced, 'u' is like English 'u' in "pub" (anyone knows where I can get decent beer in Tokyo?), and 'j' is slightly less voiced than in English (somewhat close to 'ch'). At least that's the impression I got. But what do I know, I'm definitely not a native Mandarin speaker. Anyway, the impression I got is that neither of these transliterations represents either Mandarin or Chongqing pronounciation. But then, 'Finland' is pretty far from 'Suomi', isn't it?
Vadim Vygonets / Kirgizstan BTW: Kyrgyz is not a Russian (Slavonic) language, but a Turkic language, and -i- and -y- indeed do sound different.
Yes, I know this much, but I'm not familiar with Turkic languages (to the point that I don't speak any of them), despite my roots. I heard people from Azerbaijan pronouncing words with the 'y' sound, and it sounds like a cross between Russian 'y' (represented by the Cyrillic letter called Yery in old Cyrillic alphabet and one standard or another, which is accidentally the same sound as 'y' in my last name) and Russian 'u' (very like English 'u' in "put"). But don't quote me on this, I may be mistaken. Vadik, not speaking any of these languages. -- Avoid reality at all costs.
participants (7)
-
Alex LIVINGSTON -
Earl Chew -
Garrett Wollman -
Gwillim Law -
Oscar van Vlijmen -
Paul Hill -
Vadim Vygonets