RE: Never say never

From: Andy White (Andy__White@btinternet.com)
Date: Tue Feb 11 2003 - 23:17:22 EST

  • Next message: Andy White: "Indic Vowel/Consonant combinations"

    Michael Everson wrote:

    > At 02:05 +0000 2003-02-12, Andy White wrote:
    > >Thank you for the reply.
    > >
    > >Given this information, I wonder if anyone can tell me why
    > the 'Bengali
    > >letter AE' and 'Bengali Letter EA' were never included in
    > the UCS? (I
    > >am talking about the letters mentioned in the Unicode Indic FAQ,
    > >http://www.unicode.org/faq/indic.html#13)
    >
    > Because these are not different letters of the alphabet.

    And 'Oriya letter Wa' is? What makes you think that?

    Oriya letter WA is not part of the alphabet. It is a modern innovation
    used to replace the long lost Oriya letter VA (which *was* once part of
    the alphabet and is now being reintroduced (sometimes confusingly with
    the appearance of letter Wa ).
    (If you are confused with the above statement I'm sorry but it's a long
    story)
    So to cut a long story short. Out of Wa and Va, Only Va correctly
    belongs to the alphabet. Wa is a modern innovation

    I must add here that Bengali also has a combination used to transcribe
    Wa. It is LETTER O + YYA_PHALAA.

     The special
    > form of subscript YA plus a vowel sign yields a particular
    > pronunciation, but this is a reading rule. No different from the
    > English digraph <ch> being pronounced as [t<esh>].
    > --
    > Michael Everson * * Everson Typography * * http://www.evertype.com
    >



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