Re: Colourful scripts and Aramaic

From: Peter Kirk (peter.r.kirk@ntlworld.com)
Date: Fri Aug 08 2003 - 15:25:32 EDT

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    On 07/08/2003 15:24, Michael Everson wrote:

    > At 18:03 -0400 2003-08-07, Karljürgen Feuerherm wrote:
    >
    >> My knowledge of Aramaic script is a little scanty, but my
    >> understanding is
    >> more or less the same as Peter's. Which leads me to suggest that
    >> encoding Aramaic separately would be a bit like encoding Old Akkadian
    >> (Cuneiform) separately from NeoAssyrian (Cuneiform). Which would be a
    >> bit silly (and not what we are planning in that arena).... Note that
    >> some people are even willing to argue that the substrate languages
    >> might be considered distinct, too--in case that is the argument which
    >> would be applied to Aramaic.
    >
    >
    > We do not encode languages. Would somebody please read
    > http://www.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc2/wg2/docs/n2311.pdf before deciding what
    > it is that is meant by Aramaic in the Roadmap? Note that Hebrew
    > descends FROM it, and that as do number of other scripts which clearly
    > do NOT descend from Hebrew.

    I disagree. The other scripts DO descend from square Hebrew, because
    square Hebrew is the Aramaic ancestral script of the other scripts, with
    some minor developments.

    Your argument is a bit like saying that classical Greek is a different
    script from modern Greek because Coptic and Cyrillic did not descend
    from modern Greek. Obviously that would be an anachronism. But modern
    Greek, complete with small letter forms etc, is clearly a development of
    classical Greek rather than a separate script. The same with Aramaic and
    Hebrew.

    >
    > Unicode encodes Square Hebrew.

    But I take your point, Michael, that this one is on the back burner. I
    would be very happy to leave it there indefinitely!

    -- 
    Peter Kirk
    peter@qaya.org (personal)
    peterkirk@qaya.org (work)
    http://www.qaya.org/
    


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