From: Michael Everson (everson@evertype.com)
Date: Fri May 14 2004 - 20:20:17 CDT
One last try.
At 16:21 -0400 2004-05-14, Dean Snyder wrote:
>Michael Everson wrote at 7:29 PM on Thursday, May 13, 2004:
>
>>At 11:44 -0400 2004-05-13, Dean Snyder wrote:
>>>occur side by side FOR THE SAME TEXTS IN THE SAME LANGUAGE.
>>
>>In DIFFERENT SCRIPTS.
>
>It's your dogmatic assertion that Phoenician/Palaeo-Hebrew is a different
>script (in the ENCODING sense of that word) from Jewish Hebrew.
No, it's my considered opinion, based on years of study of writing
systems and encoding. Based on an appreciation of the different
significant scripts in the history of West Asian and European writing
systems. Based on an appreciation of the NAMED distinctions scholars
of writing have made, *naming* uniquely identifiable writing systems
-- something which can be distinguished from ordinary palaeography
(which has a higher granularity). Based on simple concepts of
legibility and similarity. Based on the tradition of marks on
paper/stone/papyrus, and not on the *language* in which historical
documents are written. And based on the typographic history of these
writing systems; the Imprimerie Nationale (for instance) didn't go to
the trouble and expense of cutting standardized type for these
different scripts out of idle interest in letterforms.
>I disagree.
I know you do.
>You've given no evidence to back this assertion, and I recall no one
>else here supporting this assertion of yours with any evidence
>either.
That isn't so. Non-experts who have suffered through this discussion
can understand that the scripts/alphabets which have been proposed to
be unified under the rubric "Phoenician" all have similar glyph
characteristics which make them more like one another than they are
to standard Square Hebrew.
>(Legibility by modern readers is basically irrelevant in an ancient
>script context.)
No, it's not. Even in antiquity the Jews recognized the distinction
between their original Palaeo-Hebrew (as used in unbroken tradition
by the Samaritans) and their Square Hebrew (as derived from the
offical Aramaic script they learned in Exile.)
>I, on the other hand, have given evidence, including several email
>attachments of palaeographical charts, showing that they are not
>different scripts
I saw your e-mail attachment "Selected West Semitic Scripts". No one
disputes that these are West Semitic. The fact that someone published
them in a table does not mean that they are all the same. I would
unify items 1-7 in that attachment as Phoenician, and items 8-12 as
Hebrew. Note that the difference between item 7 and item 8 is four
centuries. Note that the attachment itself identifies item 8 as
post-exilic. Note that I (and many scholars) have observed that it
was in exile that the Jews abandoned their original script for the
Aramaic script which subsequently developed into Square Hebrew
(formal Hebrew in the attachment).
>- they are members of a diascript
This is not an English word.
>continuum, with a one-to-one mapping of letters,
So?
>with the same writing direction,
So?
>in the same alphabetical order,
So?
>with practically the same letter names,
But only practically. And so?
>used by scribes to differentiate archaizing text from more modern
>text in the same language contemporaneously,
Not so. The exiled Jews considered their new script suitable for
writing scripture and explicitly rejected the older one (called
Phoenician in my proposal). These people were perfectly aware that
their language could be written in more than one script. They did NOT
consider them variants of the same script.
>with both forms legible to the same people.
An unsupported hypothesis on your part.
>The burden of proof is on you to show that these are different scripts.
Anyone with eyes can see that items 1-7 in your attachment have more
to do with one another than they have with items 8-12, which can also
be seen to have strong similarities.
> >>Maybe you don't want scholars to intercollate this material?
> >
>>I don't care. If scholars want to tailor an ordering...
>
>Interesting attitude for an encoder, that "I don't care" statement.
I don't. I care about the plumbing, the letters available for use.
What people do with those letters is their business.
>I DO care if Dead Sea scroll scholars have to always be doing
>workarounds just to overcome the results of a dogmatic assertion
>that Palaeo-Hebrew is a different, encode-worthy, script from
>Jewish Hebrew.
The facts (as evidenced in the tetragrammaton examples in the
proposal) shows that Phoenician script was used in distinction to
Hebrew or Greek script in certain contexts. If one wants to represent
those texts in plain text (as at least some people do) then one will
encode the Phoenician bits in Phoenician script, and the other bits
in Hebrew or Greek. If one wants to *alter* those texts and represent
the Phoenician bits with Hebrew letters, that is perfectly
legitimate, and one can do that by transliterating the Phoenician
into another script.
>If there is no possible way to prevent the adoption of a proposal like
>this, why put it up for review at all?
To allow experts to examine the character set, in particular the
numbers. Your objection has been heard. It has been found inadequate
as against the desire of others to represent Phoenician script
separately from Hebrew.
>The actual encoding content of the proposal is actually rather
>simplistic and straightforward;
Apart from the question of whether the proposal deals with numbers
correctly, what you say is true.
>it's the question of whether or not to encode Phoenician at all
>that's in any way interesting or merits discussion.
Well, it's been discussed, and unification has been rejected, at
least on this list.
>And if this is a foregone conclusion, an "inevitability", then the
>review process is a sham.
Not so. The technical content of the proposal remains open for review.
>My question is, do you really care what ANYBODY says about encoding
>or not encoding Phoenician, or has your mind been made up for 10
>years and nothing can change it now?
I care. I have seen the objections, and have considered them (as have others).
> >>If the UTC encodes Archaic Greek and does not encode Phoenician, it will
>>>make both Classicists and Semiticists happy.
>>
>>Nope. Archaic Greek can be properly unified with Greek.
>
>Then forget about plain text distinction of the two.
OK. I've looked at plenty of ostraca. I've looked at books on
typography printed in Greek in Greece, which deal with these issues.
I remain convinced that Archaic Greek need not be distinguished from
Greek, any more than Archaic Latin needs to be distinguished from
Latin.
>Old Canaanite can be properly unified with Hebrew - de facto, it is
>unified right now.
It can, on some structural grounds; but on other grounds, it should
not be so unified.
>Are you going on record here as stipulating that Archaic Greek is
>not an important node on its family tree?
Yes. Archaic Greek letters like QOPPA and SAN are already encoded,
for example. Nothing in Powell or other sources suggests to me that
this is an error.
> >We're going
>>to do this because the Universal Character Set is a cultural artifact
>>for everyone, not simply a tool for certain kinds of scholars.
>
>My proposal to encode Archaic Greek instead of Phoenician is a
>solution that will work better for everyone - your proposal to
>encode Phoenician is an inadequacy for Classicists,
An unsupported supposition.
>an increased mess for Semiticists,
Semiticists like you who prefer to transliterate in Hebrew are
already served by Unicode as it is. You have not demonstrated
otherwise.
>and a convenience for makers of plain text alphabet charts.
Well, I disagree, and can only state again: "Pete oun maaje mmof
esotm marefsotm."
-- Michael Everson * * Everson Typography * * http://www.evertype.com
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri May 14 2004 - 20:21:06 CDT