From: Dean Snyder (dean.snyder@jhu.edu)
Date: Thu Oct 21 2004 - 15:49:43 CST
Philipp Reichmuth wrote at 9:44 PM on Thursday, October 21, 2004:
>I'm not saying that half ring is the *only* way Ayin is transcribed.
>...
>However, I would say that left half ring is preferred, at least in works
>dealing with more than just Hebrew (supposing the character was
>available at all to the respective author)
I would not say that there is a "preferred" practice for transliterated
ayin (implying some sort of international consensus); instead I would
just say there are many competing practices - left half ring, left-
single-quotation-mark, inverted-left-single-quotation-mark, slanted-left-
single-quotation-mark, slanted-inverted-enlarged-left-single-quotation-
mark (as in Gardiner's Egyptian Grammar), super-scripted-c, IPA
pharyngeal voiced fricative, plus various other idiosyncratic
permutations on the basic idea.
>> 02BF MODIFIER LETTER LEFT HALF RING
>
>Which is what I use (dating back from Unicode 3.0, where it was
>specifically annotated). (I know authors who use superscript c as well.)
I personally agree with your choice - if I had to pick one Unicode
character to designate as transliterated ayin I would choose left half
ring. And in that case, I would recommend encoding:
* MODIFIER CAPITAL LETTER LEFT HALF RING
And, while we're at it, do the analogous thing for transliterated aleph
and encode:
* MODIFIER CAPITAL LETTER RIGHT HALF RING
(Although I realize that this is not the desired Egyptian transliterated
aleph and would therefore have limited usage in Semitic contexts.)
Respectfully,
Dean A. Snyder
Assistant Research Scholar
Manager, Digital Hammurabi Project
Computer Science Department
Whiting School of Engineering
218C New Engineering Building
3400 North Charles Street
Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore, Maryland, USA 21218
office: 410 516-6850
cell: 717 817-4897
www.jhu.edu/digitalhammurabi
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Thu Oct 21 2004 - 16:00:09 CST