Re: [BZ #13951] Fix country_name of dz_BT

[Rich Felker <dalias at aerifal dot cx>]

On Fri, Nov 16, 2012 at 03:50:11PM -0500, Carlos O'Donell wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 16, 2012 at 3:39 PM, Andreas Schwab <schwab@linux-m68k.org> wrote:
> > Rich Felker <dalias@aerifal.cx> writes:
> >
> >> On Fri, Nov 16, 2012 at 02:29:25PM -0500, Carlos O'Donell wrote:
> >>> On Fri, Nov 16, 2012 at 5:37 AM, Andreas Jaeger <aj@suse.com> wrote:
> >>> > +% àààààà
> >>> > +country_name "<U0F60><U0F56><U0FB2><U0F74><U0F42><U0F0D>"
> >>>
> >>> According to wikipedia the official name for Bhutan is àààààààààà not àààààà.
> >>>
> >>> Notice the similarity between the names? It makes me think that the
> >>> country_name here is a short form, but I'd like to have that confirmed
> >>> and I'd like to see the English phonetic version in brackets to
> >>> assist future non-native speakers.
> >>>
> >>> Can you confirm with the original submitter what is actually being
> >>> described here?
> >>
> >> I agree some native speakers should be consulted, but I suspect àààààà
> >> should be used.
> >
> > What about the difference between à (<U0F0D>) and à (<U0F0B>)?
> 
> I noticed that too, worse on the Bhutan government website uses
> neither <U0F0D> or <U0F0B> are used in the official name.
> 
> e.g. http://www.bhutan.gov.bt/government/images/centenary.GIF

They are both punctuation. à is analogous to a space (but appears at
the end of each word/unit, not just between words, except when
followed by à) and à serves roles like various other punctuation
including period, colon, comma, etc. I'm not sure about Dzongkha
usage, but in Tibetan, à almost never follows à (the vertical bar of
the à serves the role, or something like that).

As for whether these strings should have such punctuation internally
or only get it added as part of string-combining operations, that's
something the localization people should answer.

Rich