Re: Aust Aboriginal languages

From: Giles S Martin (ulgsm@dewey.newcastle.edu.au)
Date: Sun Jun 01 1997 - 21:45:54 EDT


I missed the orignal question, and I'm not an expert on Australian
Abriginal languages, nut my observations are:

(1) All that I know a written in the Latin alphabet, which is not
surprising given that the dominant culture in this country is English-
speaking.

(2) The only character that I am aware of that falls outside the 26-
letter Latin alphabet is the "n" with a tail, represening the "ng"
sound. This of course is in Unicode at U+014A and U+014B.

(3) If there are other characters required by some languages, then they
are likely to fall within the range of characters easily available in an
English-speaking country, on typewriters, from printers, and in word-
processing programs. They will therefore be available in Unicode.

I will forward a copy of this response to an e-mail list called
"ATSILIRN", which is the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Lirary
and Information Resources Network, to see if they can add anything to
this response.

Giles

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