Re: Definition of COUNTRY (Was: Resignation)
On Thu, 2004-05-06 at 14:29 +0200, Jean-Michel POURE wrote:
> To come to the technical point, the locale system is buggy because zh_CN
> reffers to "simplified Chinese" and zh_TW to "traditionnal Chinese", which in
> reality have little to do with countries. It is an historical error in Unix.
>
> It would be nice if the installer could display "Traditionnal Chinese" and
> "Simplified Chinese". I think that the RH installer does this (although I am
> not sure).
>
> Why not ask the Chinese their point of view.
OK, here's my take.
People in Hong Kong speak Cantonese. People in Taiwan speak Mandarin.
People in mainland China speak Putonghua. (Yes, I know Putonghua and
Mandarin are essentially the same thing, but common terms and even
grammar are slightly different across the three regions, so from a l10n
point of view they should be treated as different.)
(And although people in southern mainland China also speak Cantonese,
the terms and grammar they use are the same as the rest of mainland
China and not Hong Kong. (correct me if I'm wrong here!))
All of these are dialects of the Chinese language. They can be written
down in both Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese.
So theorectically you have six combinations here:
zh_CN@simplified zh_CN@traditional
zh_HK@simplified zh_HK@traditional
zh_TW@simplified zh_TW@traditional
Practically, nobody in Taiwan use Simplified Chinese. Only the older
generation in mainland China still use Traditional Chinese. "Native"
Hong Kong people use Traditional Chinese, but use of Simplified Chinese
is increasing in printed materials to cater for the influx of mainland
tourists swamping^Wvisiting Hong Kong. ;)
So the default for zh_CN should be zh_CN@simplified, zh_HK
zh_HK@traditional, and zh_TW zh_TW@traditional.
I'm not sure how the languagechooser handles locale modifiers, but
showing both Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese at the top level
should be acceptable.
Roger
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