From: ekeown@student.umass.edu
Date: Fri Aug 08 2003 - 16:13:34 EDT
Madison WI
Hello:
> > 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.
First, I think the problems with Aramaic are incredibly complicated.
Second, the original "grandmother alphabet" for most alphabetic
scripts from Persia, NW India, and so forth, going north
or east or even southeast, is actually INSCRIPTIONAL ARAMAIC.
I assume that the Roadmap refers to the stage of earlier Aramaic,
the epigraphic, which is about 870 B.C. - ca 650 B.C. (I'm not sure of the
endpoint, I only had Biblical Aramaic with a tiny exposure to epigraphy).
> 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.
I don't think very much descends from square Hebrew---it's too far
down the line of descent.....Square Aramaic, emerging slowly, letter by letter,
from 500 B.C. in Elephantine, Egypt, gives birth to square Hebrew, and square
Hebrew eventually gives birth to [sic] Rashi script (actually a Sephardic
cursive invented after Rashi's time--he was Ashkenazi) and then to modern
cursive Hebrew.
Elaine
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