Andre Engels wrote:
On Mon, 19 Jul 2004 13:25:38 +0100 Timwi timwi@gmx.net wrote:
Andre Engels wrote:
In the Pywikipediabot, it is now specified to use alphabetical order by language name
How do you alphabetically sort 中文, 日本語, etc.?
Using the most common transliteration into the Latin alphabet. However, I know that on nl: exactly this problem was the reason to use alphabetic by code instead. The same might hold for de:, I don't know about them.
To be more correct it should be "romanization" instead of "transliteration". It has to do with how a set of non-alphabetical symbols in a language are represented with the Latin alphabet. Pinyin representation may be close to the pronunciation of Chinese in some European languages, but that is not an essential element of romanization. It should be valid for use in contexts of all languages. That would make everyone's life much simpler. The difficulty may be in attempting to determine what is "most common". At one times the Wade-Giles system prevailed for the romanization into English, but that has rapidly become obsolete. I imagine that there is a similar situation for other languages. Japanese romanji may be in a similar situation.
Ec