Re: Samaritan shan symbol

From: Peter Kirk (peterkirk@qaya.org)
Date: Fri Jan 16 2004 - 18:09:11 EST

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    On 16/01/2004 13:37, Michael Everson wrote:

    > At 04:33 -0800 2004-01-16, Peter Kirk wrote:
    >
    >> Michael, you seem to have written "shan" rather than "shin" twice
    >> independently in the subject line, so presumably this is not a typo.
    >> Do you actually hold that the letter is called "shan" rather than
    >> "shin"? Do you have any evidence for this? Are you basing this on the
    >> table at http://www.the-samaritans.com/script.htm? As this table
    >> looks rather old, possibly copied from a 19th century book, it would
    >> be good to check that these are the names in current use by the
    >> Samaritan community.
    >
    >
    > We have a number of sources for Samaritan character names, including a
    > font made by a modern Samaritan.
    >
    > SAMARITAN LETTER ALAF
    > SAMARITAN LETTER BIT
    > SAMARITAN LETTER GAMAN
    > SAMARITAN LETTER DALAT
    > SAMARITAN LETTER IY
    > SAMARITAN LETTER BA
    > SAMARITAN LETTER ZEN
    > SAMARITAN LETTER IT
    > SAMARITAN LETTER TIT
    > SAMARITAN LETTER YUT
    > SAMARITAN LETTER KAF
    > SAMARITAN LETTER LABAT
    > SAMARITAN LETTER MIM
    > SAMARITAN LETTER NUN
    > SAMARITAN LETTER SINGAT
    > SAMARITAN LETTER IN
    > SAMARITAN LETTER FI
    > SAMARITAN LETTER TSADIY
    > SAMARITAN LETTER QUF
    > SAMARITAN LETTER RISH
    > SAMARITAN LETTER SHAN
    > SAMARITAN LETTER TAF
    >
    >> Meanwhile the scholarly world, for whose benefit the LTR symbol is
    >> being proposed, consistently refers to this letter as shin rather
    >> than shan - although the SIL proposal of June 2003 for this character
    >> avoided the problem by proposing the name SAMARITAN PENTATEUCH SIGN.
    >
    >
    > That may well be appropriate.
    >
    >> (I note that you are still awaiting a public reply to
    >> http://www.the-samaritans.com/forum/display_message.asp?mid=388).
    >
    >
    > We had a response from someone there offline with whom we are talking;
    > but haven't heard from him again in a while. Another contact is going
    > to do some library digging for us in Berkeley.

    Thanks for the clarification. That looks a good set of names for the
    actual alphabet. They should of course be checked along with the whole
    proposal with the Samaritan community.

    If it is decided not to encode a separate Samaritan Pentateuch sign, I
    would suggest giving an alternative name of "Samaritan shin" as well as
    "Samaritan Pentateuch sign", to avoid confusing scholars who may use
    this name. I also wonder if its use is strictly restricted to indicating
    the Samaritan Pentateuch, or if it may sometimes be used to refer to
    other Samaritan texts, or to the Samaritan script, dialect or religious
    tradition more generally. I was trying to check whether any of the
    samples in the SIL proposal have a wider reference, but scripts.sil.org
    is currently offline. 

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

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