From: Anto'nio Martins-Tuva'lkin (antonio@tuvalkin.web.pt)
Date: Sat Sep 10 2005 - 17:30:07 CDT
On 2005.09.10, 17:37, Peter Kirk <peterkirk@qaya.org> wrote:
> That is why it is misleading for António to try to insist that "what
> Unicode does "cover" are not languages, but writing systems." The cases
> I am talking about are ones where Unicode does cover the writing system,
> but not the specific character repertoires required for certain
> languages.
Sorry, I was unclear. What I meant is that Unicode, as a *character*
repertoire, can only cover (or not) collections of characters, and not
collections of oranges or apples: Languages do not consist of characters,
so Unicode cannot cover languages.
By "writing system" I meant not "script" but "orthography" — i.e., the
writing system (or one of the writing systems) of a given language.
E.g., does Unicode cover Nahualt language? Well, it does cover its current
orthography, which uses letters of the latin script, but it does not cover
its historical orthography, which uses Mayan hieroglyphs. So, does Unicode
cover Nahualt (or any other) language?… Silly question.
-- ____.
António MARTINS-Tuválkin | ()|
<antonio@tuvalkin.web.pt> |####|
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