From: Andrew C. West (andrewcwest@alumni.princeton.edu)
Date: Thu Jan 15 2004 - 05:41:56 EST
On Wed, 14 Jan 2004 10:44:18 -0800, Peter Kirk wrote:
>
> I received the following reply from a Zhuang researcher, which agrees
> with what Andrew has written:
...
>
> > There are two other orthographies in use in Zhuang. Most important,
> > there is an ancient Zhuang square-character script that has never been
> > standardized. If it ever is, maybe we can get a unicode font for it.
> > Until then, I wouldn't worry about it much. Second, sometimes, very
> > informally, people will use Chinese characters to write Zhuang. This
> > happens rarely.
>
> On this last paragraph, I note that this ancient Zhuang script has not
> even been roadmapped. From a brief Internet search, I found that it
> consists of about 10,000 characters. Or is it roadmapped under another
> name? Or is it unified with CJK - despite the researcher clearly
> distinguishing it from Chinese characters?
A dictionary of traditional Zhuang usage ideographs was published in 1989 as _Gu
Zhuangzi Zidian_ 古壮字字典 (Guangxi Minzu Chubanshe 广西民族出版社, 1989) [my
apologies for the encoding which is probably Shift-JIS .. I have no control over
how my outgoing emails are encoded], but I haven't been able to get hold of a
copy yet. It should provide plenty of material for a proposal, although at least
some Zhuang usage ideographs are already coincidentally encoded in CJK-B or in
the pipeline for CJK-C (e.g. U+28499 = Zhuang nak "heavy").
Zhuang ideographs are either Han ideographs borrowed for their pronunciation or
for their meaning, or modified Han ideographs in the manner of Vietnamese nom
characters. Therefore they do not need to be separately roadmapped, but belong
in the CJK Unified Ideographs blocks ... hmm perhaps CJKVZ Unified Ideographs is
more appropriate ?
For example, a Zhuang word might be written with a Han ideograph with the same
or similar pronunciation in the local Chinese dialect (generally either the
Liuzhou dialect of Mandarin Chinese in Northern Guangxi or the Guangxi dialect
of Cantonese in Southern Guangxi). Thus the Zhuang word kau1 meaning "I" might
be written using the Han ideograph 古 GU3 [U+53E4].
On the other hand, a new ideograph might be created from two or more existing
Han ideographs or ideographic components to represent a Zhuang word. Thus, the
Zhuang word na2 meaning "paddy field" might be written with a constructed
ideograph written with the Han ideograph 那 NA4 [U+90A3] above the Han ideograph
田 TIAN2 [U+7530] "field" (U+90A3 giving the pronunciation, and U+7530 giving
the meaning).
A new ideograph might also be created by decomposing or altering the form of an
existing Han ideograph. For example, the Zhuang word for side might be written
using one half of the Han ideograph 門 MEN2 [U+9580] "gate".
As Peter's correspondent mentions, this system of writing was never
standardised, so the actual Zhuang ideographs used for any given Zhuang word may
vary from place to place, and from manuscript to manuscript.
Incidentally the Zhuang ideographs were never widely used as a means of
communication, but were mostly used for writing down traditional Zhuang texts,
such as folk songs. To be educated meant (and still means) to be able to read,
write and speak Chinese, and so educated Zhuang would simply use Chinese for
personal correspondence. On the other hand, uneducated Zhuang would not be able
to read or write the Zhuang usage ideographs anyway.
Andrew
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Thu Jan 15 2004 - 06:13:57 EST