RE: Response to Everson Phoenician and why June 7?

From: Jony Rosenne (rosennej@qsm.co.il)
Date: Sat May 22 2004 - 23:02:22 CDT

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

    Michael, this is not getting anywhere.

    You think it is a different script, so you say "transliterate". They think
    it's the same script, so they say "encode".

    Since there are 22 letters with similar meanings and similar names, there is
    not much difference between transliteration and encoding in practice.

    I don't think the history of writing systems is going to help us here. There
    is no disagreement about the facts, just about their interpretation.

    Jony

    > -----Original Message-----
    > From: unicode-bounce@unicode.org
    > [mailto:unicode-bounce@unicode.org] On Behalf Of Michael Everson
    > Sent: Sunday, May 23, 2004 12:51 AM
    > To: unicode@unicode.org
    > Subject: Re: Response to Everson Phoenician and why June 7?
    >
    >
    > At 15:14 -0700 2004-05-22, E. Keown wrote:
    >
    > >I got hysterical--or perhaps I should say, continued to be
    > >hysterical--because I thought no one on the Unicode list was
    > >listening (even to Dean Snyder, a
    > >very serious expert) and I thought maybe you all would listen to
    > >Kaufman....he does have the 2nd-largest Semitic database in the
    > >world at this point.
    >
    > No Semiticist is going to convince me that Phoenician is a font
    > variant of Hebrew. Ever. The history of writing systems says
    > otherwise. That is *my* expert opinion.
    >
    > Whether Semiticists want to transliterate everything into Hebrew or
    > Latin in their databases is their business. I fully support their
    > efforts.
    >
    > What "problems" people like Dean imagine will occur if they are
    > googling for Phoenician documents, well, it's just not serious. Many
    > texts exist in Latin transliteration, and the problems of the
    > representation of ALEF and AYIN in Latin transliteration are worse
    > than any problem anyone would ever have with poor li'l Phoenician.
    > --
    > Michael Everson * * Everson Typography * * http://www.evertype.com
    >
    >
    >



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