following up on my message about "han yu pin yin" yesterday, here is some more information on the same, as requested.
http://www.loc.gov/catdir/pinyin/romcover.html i could not locate the chinese governement website that has information on this, but i guess the above provides the gist of it. from the discussions that we had on the proper roman representation of assamese, it seems to me that a system such as above for the assamese language could do much to clear the confusions. on a separate note, just a thought - why do people not familiar with the assamese language (and sometimes even by people who are) refer to "saikia" as SAIKIA and not "XOIKIA" whereas "juergen" and "javier" gets referred to as "yorgen" and "havier"? i thought that for names, you are supposed to pronounce them as a native would do. isn't that so? like for example, bbc/cnn pronounces "yoske fischer" not "joske fischer", "havier solana" not "javier solana" and at the same time would pronounce "hiteshwar saikia" as saikia and not xoikia. -- /amlan
