Re: Caron / Hacek?

From: John Hudson (tiro@tiro.com)
Date: Tue Mar 04 2003 - 15:10:50 EST

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    At 11:35 AM 3/4/2003, Frank da Cruz wrote:

    >I just noticed that upper and/or lower case letters D, I, L, and T
    >with caron (hacek) are sometimes displayed with an apostrophe instead
    >of a caron (and sometimes not). Is there any rhyme or reason to
    >this?

    In the Slovak orthography, the lowercase d, l and t are normally written
    with the 'apostrophe' form of the accent. Of the uppercase letters, only
    the L should normally be written with the 'apostrophe' form of the accent;
    the D and T should be written with the normal caron/hacek form. The C/c and
    Z/z are written with the caron/hacek form in both upper and lowercase. The
    reason for the distinction is, I believe, that the d, l and t with the
    aprostrophe mark indicate palatalisation (softening) of the unmarked
    consonant, whereas the c and z with caron indicate distinct consonants. In
    the uppercase letters, presumably because of the lack of convenient space
    for the apostrophe relative to the T and D, this form of the mark is only
    retained for L.

    John Hudson

    Tiro Typeworks www.tiro.com
    Vancouver, BC tiro@tiro.com

    It is necessary that by all means and cunning,
    the cursed owners of books should be persuaded
    to make them available to us, either by argument
    or by force. - Michael Apostolis, 1467



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