From: Peter Kirk (peterkirk@qaya.org)
Date: Fri Oct 24 2003 - 07:49:54 CST
On 24/10/2003 04:27, Anto'nio Martins-Tuva'lkin wrote:
>On 2003.10.23, 23:19, Peter Kirk <peterkirk@qaya.org> wrote:
>
>
>
>>the V-shaped letter is something like the Russian close central vowel
>>? - might be U+0474 which was used in Russian up to about that time,
>>
>>
>
>Iz^ica, of course! I mean, it may be something else though, but it is
>unforgivable that I hadn't remembered that one!
>
>
>
>>the backwards P is the something like the Russian ? and the English k
>>- this just might be an alternative form of U+0480 which is in effect
>>a Cyrillic Q.
>>
>>
>
>Hm, U+0480 is the cyrillic version of koppa -- I'd expect it to appear
>only in byzantine words, mainly used in Orthodox Church context, just
>like cyrillic omega (U+0460) and cyrillic psi (U+0470). ...
>
This seems odd to me as koppa was never used in Byzantine Greek, except
as a number. Perhaps the Cyrillic koppa was also only a number. It
wasn't in regular use up to c.1917 in the way that U+0474 was.
>... But since this
>is the 1909-1926 Abkhaz orthography, we can expect this kind of letters
>in use more than in Stalin-era orthographies, that's for sure.
>
>Anyway, this may be the specific cyrillic glyph refered in use in
>Kurdish some time ago, one point in favor of its disunification from
>U+0051.
>
>However, I remember having sees a late 18th cent. french painting
>showing U+0051 (latin, not cyrillic!) with the reverse "P" glyph.
>
>
>
Of course lower case q always looks like reverse p, and it is not
unexpected that this would sometimes find its way into an upper case
alphabet.
>>I don't see any apostrophe in the images either at
>>http://soviet.lovehinaplus.com/CGEORGIA.HTM or at
>>http://coffeenews.narod.ru/News/Simbol/IM_001.html.
>>
>>
>
>It is between the "T" and "A" of the first word -- I reckon it may be a
>grave (on the "A") instead.
>
>
>
I see this now in the larger image. But as for what it is... It might be
an apostrophe after the T marking an ejective, as in the IPA version of
one of the T's in
http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Abkhaz-alphabet. From
http://www.abkhazia.org/lang.html: Abkhaz has "the standard Caucasian
opposition between voiced vs voiceless aspirate vs voiceless ejective
obstruents". Though quite why they would use an ejective in the
transliteration of "proletariat", I don't know.
>>Am I missing something?
>>http://www.tuvalkin.web.pt/unicode/su-geab.jpg is not found.
>>
>>
>
>Sorry. It should be http://www.tuvalkin.web.pt/unicode/su)geab.jpg
>
>
Thanks. I have it now - although I am surprised that ")" is legal here.
As for U+0417 and U+04E0, it is clear that the current Abkhaz alphabet
uses both of these, see
http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Abkhaz-alphabet. I would expect
that the letter in the seal is U+04E0 or its predecessor as I have never
seen an angular shape for U+0417.
See also
http://www.gutenberg.eu.org/pub/GUTenberg/publicationsPDF/28-29-berdnikovb.pdf,
which incidentally mentions at least two Cyrillic letters not in Unicode
(top of p.34), the "title forms" of the l and n with soft sign ligatures.
-- Peter Kirk peter@qaya.org (personal) peterkirk@qaya.org (work) http://www.qaya.org/
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