Talk:BGN/PCGN romanization

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[edit] Capitalization

My Canadian Oxford Dictionary (2nd ed., 2004) has an un-capitalized headword "romanization", and this is the way I've been using it in Wikipedia articles. The word is not a proper noun itself, and is already removed from anything Roman, and I assume that other Oxford dictionaries probably follow the same convention (although it looks like the 2000 American Heritage dictionary disagrees). The dictionary does capitalize "Latinize", "-ation", probably because of its closer connection to the proper noun "Latin alphabet". —Michael Z. 2006-02-14 18:49 Z

The New Oxford American Dictionary 2nd ed. built into my Mac OS has the headword "romanize", with capitalized "Romanize" as an alternate version. —Michael Z. 2006-02-14 19:10 Z

Not that I enjoy putting burden on someone else's shoulders, but I guess since you are the native speaker, it's up to you to decide how to capitalize this word properly :) I have no preference either way, and I can't recall an appropriate WP guideline off the top of my head, especially considering the fact that dictionaries disagree. Just so you know, Word spellchecker offers to capitalize the word, but that, of course, hardly helps much.—Ëzhiki (ërinacëus amurënsis) 19:09, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Well, if the lower-case word is fine, perhaps that's what we should use. That way it'll match the MoS capitalization guidelines. What do you think?—Ëzhiki (ërinacëus amurënsis) 19:14, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

No burden—I don't mind deciding for everybody :). By the way, how does the BGN/PCGN publication capitalize the word romanize, -ization when it is not part of a title? —Michael Z. 2006-02-14 19:15 Z

Ah, busted at last :) As for your question, BGN/PCGN folks use lower case for all cases.—Ëzhiki (ërinacëus amurënsis) 19:20, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

I'll move the article back; hope you don't mind. —Michael Z. 2006-02-14 19:37 Z

[edit] Cyrillic overview

Okay. Wow, that's an impressive list when you link them all in one article. How about an über-overview article, BGN/PCGN romanization of Cyrillic, with one or two tables similar to the one in scientific transliteration?. —Michael Z. 2006-02-14 18:51 Z

That'll probably work, although creating an hierarchical structure of all romanization-related articles for personal reference already gave me a headache :) How do you envision links between this article, BGN/PCGN romanization of Cyrillic, and BGN/PCGN romanization of "LangName" series (where "LangName" is the name of any language covered by BGN/PCGN, not necessarily using the Cyrillic alphabet)?—Ëzhiki (ërinacëus amurënsis) 19:09, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Well, one step at a time. I think the Cyrillic article would at least link back to this main article, and could link to articles for the individual Cyrillic romanizations from the table headings. —Michael Z. 2006-02-14 19:12 Z

[edit] List format

The list looks scary with all those red links at the start of each entry. I was kind of hoping that may be you (Michael) would rework it into a table—it would look nicer. I guess my hint was way too subtle :) Not that it's important now, but maybe sometime later you'll find time for that? The list is hard to read no matter how you turn it; the only reason I made it into the list at all was because it was the easiest for the article mock-up.—Ëzhiki (ërinacëus amurënsis) 20:00, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

I'll leave it as a list for now. The red links don't seem quite right: they all look like they point to the same "Romanization" article. Maybe a table with the full article titles ("BGN/PCGN Romanization of Amharic", etc.) is the right way to go, but then there'll be an even bigger mass of red on the page. Requires a bit of thought.

I think BGN/PCGN romanization of Russian could be started with the big table from romanization of Russian. —Michael Z. 2006-02-14 20:22 Z

Yup, that's what I'm working on right now. Hopefully we are not duplicating efforts. As for formatting, that can certainly wait.—Ëzhiki (ërinacëus amurënsis) 20:24, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

OK, done. Apart from the table, there is surprisingly little to be said.—Ëzhiki (ërinacëus amurënsis) 20:37, 14 February 2006 (UTC)