Re: ogonek vs. retroflex hook

From: Kenneth Whistler (kenw@sybase.com)
Date: Wed Apr 02 2003 - 16:54:10 EST

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    Peter,

    > Jim Allan wrote on 04/02/2003 12:27:07 PM:
    >
    > > This fits a normal convention in American linguistics to use ogonek to
    > > signify a nasal.
    >
    > That isn't the only convention. I am finding several samples of typographic
    > retroflex hook being used to indicate nasalisation of vowels.

    Jim Allan is right. It is the *ogonek* which is used to signify
    the nasalization of vowels. If you have found things that
    as "samples of typographic retroflex hook" being used this
    way, you just have confused font designers creating bad
    glyphs, IMO. Note also that there is a notorious continuum
    of used and possible shapes, attached or unattached, for the
    various left and right hooks which have been used as
    diacritics under Latin letters. Some people who have used
    these things don't actually know what an ogonek is supposed
    to look like. And some of these usages date back to the
    days of 9-pin dot matrix printers, when an o-ogonek, if
    you were lucky enough to have one, looked like this:

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    --Ken



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