Re: New contribution

From: John Cowan (cowan@ccil.org)
Date: Mon May 03 2004 - 09:50:26 CDT


Michael Everson scripsit:

> It is false to suggest that fully-pointed Hebrew text can be rendered
> in Phoenician script and that this is perfectly acceptable to any
> Hebrew reader

Of course it is.

> as would be the case for ordinary font change).

Not all font changes are acceptable. Give me a book, any book,
set in Magnificat, or Stop, and I'll hand you back a pile of
well-chewed shreds.

> I have referred to Latin font hacks as well as Hebrew ones. That one
> got ignored, of course, because it shows the Hebrew font-hack argument
> to be flimsy.

It's not about font hacks. It's about structural identity.

> And frankly, I don't consider that Snyder or Kirk or Cowan speak for
> the Semiticist community as they would have us think.

I make no such claim, and it's disingenuous of you to say that I do.

> Square Hebrew as encoded in the Unicode Standard is a beast unto
> itself. John Cowan's wish for a generic 22-letter West Semitic Abjad
> may be all very well and good, but Hebrew is much more than that,
> and it is not sensible to pretend that it isn't.

I don't.

-- 
"They tried to pierce your heart                John Cowan
with a Morgul-knife that remains in the         http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
wound.  If they had succeeded, you would        http://www.reutershealth.com
become a wraith under the domination of the Dark Lord."         --Gandalf


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