From: Ernest Cline (ernestcline@mindspring.com)
Date: Mon May 30 2005 - 14:07:28 CDT
I came across by accident a Wikipedia article on the Claudian
letters. This inspired me to also search the list archives
and to make the following comments based on all of this.
1) Based on what is admittedly only an unsourced Wikipedia
article, I'm not convinced that LEFT TACK is an appropriate
choice to represent Claudius' chopped in half H. First, there is
the minor matter of glyph. The horizontal bar of LEFT TACK is
longer than the similar shaped Claudian letter. RIGHT TACK and
ASSERTION differ in their glyphs only in the length of the
horizontal bar, which implies that bar length is significant for
the TACK characters. The image in the Wikipedia article on the
Claudian letters looks more like a reversed ASSERTION than a
LEFT TACK. In addition the properties aren't quite right.
(I'm assuming that the description of this character in the
previous mailing list discussion as a RIGHT TACK was a case of
a mistaken character name. If not and the original respondent
was referring to a glyph shaped like the left half of a capital H
instead of the right half, then glyphic variation within the
Claudian letter would be an even stronger argument for a separate
letter.)
2) Property issues also form a weak argument in favor of a
reversed C character separate from ROMAN NUMERAL REVERSED ONE
HUNDRED, but without glyph issues as in the case of LEFT TACK,
I'm not that convinced that it should be separate, especially
since it may be that Claudius based his reversed C letter on
this numeral.
3) ROMAN NUMERAL REVERSED ONE HUNDRED and LEFT TACK (if a new
character is not added instead), along with TURNED CAPITAL F,
need to be appropriately glossed for their usage as Claudian
letters, especially since they are not in any of the Latin
character blocks.
Ernest Cline
ernestcline@mindspring.com
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