Re: Response to Everson Phoenician and why June 7?

From: Peter Kirk (peterkirk@qaya.org)
Date: Sat May 22 2004 - 17:47:48 CDT

  • Next message: Michael Everson: "Re: Response to Everson Phoenician and why June 7?"

    On 22/05/2004 14:04, James Kass wrote:

    > ...
    >
    >>Well, we are now being assured that people who want to encode
    >>Phoenician, palaeo-Hebrew etc as Unicode Hebrew will be quite free to do
    >>so indefinitely even if Phoenician is encoded.
    >>
    >>
    >
    >There is no such assurance. The actual assurance is more like
    >'people who wish to transliterate ancient scripts into modern ones
    >are perfectly free to do so'. Indeed, how could it be otherwise?
    >
    >

    As I understand it, what at least a number of Semitic scholars want to
    do is not to transliterate, but to represent Phoenician texts with
    Phoenician letters with the Unicode Hebrew characters, and fonts with
    Phoenician glyphs at the Hebrew character code points. In other words,
    to treat the difference between Hebrew and Phoenician as a font change,
    like the difference between Fraktur and normal Latin script. Will they
    be allowed to do that after a Phoenician block is defined, or will they
    not? If the answer is that they will not, this justifies the objection
    that a new Phoenician block interferes with the work of the real experts
    in the field, in order to meet the not very clearly defined requirements
    of a few non-experts.

    >...
    >
    >>My claim is that Kaufman is a top
    >>scholar of Aramaic, but not that he formally represents other scholars.
    >>
    >>
    >
    >Your original post from which the claim might be inferred was:
    >
    > "Dr Kaufman's response makes it clear that to
    > professionals in the field Everson's proposal is
    > not just questionable but ridiculous."
    >
    >All I'd asked (sigh) is if Dr. Kaufman spoke only for himself, or
    >if he claimed to speak for *all* professionals in the field.
    >
    >
    >
    OK, if you want to be picky, "Dr Kaufman's response makes it clear that
    to at least one professional in the field Everson's proposal is not just
    questionable but ridiculous." Snyder and Keown suggest that it is at
    least three, although I don't remember them actually using the word
    "ridiculous".

    > ...
    >
    >
    >He considers the proposal ridiculous, so he gets ridicule in return.
    >It's called "tit-for-tat".
    >
    >His posting as it appeared on the Unicode list was offensive. I thought
    >Michael Kaplan did a fine job of responding to it.
    >
    >
    >
    The Phoenician proposal was offensive to him (as I see the situation),
    so he causes offence in return. It's called "tit-for-tat".

    >>On 20/05/2004 19:45, John Hudson wrote:
    >>
    >>
    >>
    >>>... There is no reason at all why Semiticists cannot simply totally
    >>>ignore the proposed Phoenician block. The important question then, it
    >>>seems to me, is not whether to encode Phoenician or not, but how to
    >>>better communicate that the encoding of a particular set of characters
    >>>does not mean that they have to be used to encode particular texts or
    >>>languages.
    >>>
    >>>
    >>>
    >>Would that the first sentence were true! As for the second sentence, if
    >>the UTC and others really agree that with this position, first this
    >>needs to be communicated to James Kass.
    >>
    >>
    >
    >I don't have a problem with transliteration and I'm surprised that
    >you seem to think I do.
    >
    >
    >
    I'm not talking about transliteration. See above.

    >>The fear is rather that a few people, who are not true Semitic scholars,
    >>will embrace the new range, and by doing so will make things much harder
    >>for the majority who don't need and don't want the new encoding.
    >>
    >>
    >
    >If only a few people would embrace the new range, how would
    >such a 'fringe group' create problems for "true Semitic scholars"?
    >
    >

    If a few people encode a significant number of texts according to their
    preferences, this implies a corpus in mixed encodings, which is what I
    am trying to avoid.

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


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