Final letters in Hebrew and Arabic

From: Nick NICHOLAS (nicholas@uci.edu)
Date: Fri Mar 09 2001 - 16:34:49 EST


Many thanks to all who responded on the Albanian alphabet. No script too
obscure, eh? :-) Kudos!

With regard to the recent discussion on Greek final sigmas, I have a
couple of questions on the final forms of letters in Hebrew and Arabic,
just for the sake of comparison.

(1) When a letter with a final variant appears alone --- say as a numeral,
or in discussion of the letter or phoneme --- does it under any
circumstances appear in its final form, or is it always medial?

(2) Do diacritics --- vowel points, cantillations, extra dots on Arabic
letters, whatever --- ever make a final form medial?

Instances from any typographical practice, not just the current
mainstream, are welcome.

-- 
Nick Nicholas. TLG, UCI, USA. nicholas@uci.edu; www.tlg.uci.edu/~opoudjis
 Many among their proselytes had sold their lands and houses to increase
  the public riches of the sect --- at the expense, indeed, of their
  unfortunate children, who found themselves beggars because their
  parents had been saints. (Edward Gibbon, _Decline and Fall_.)



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