Cyrillic breve (was: "Re: Chuvash numerals")

From: Anto'nio Martins-Tuva'lkin (antonio@tuvalkin.web.pt)
Date: Fri Aug 10 2007 - 15:26:57 CDT

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    On 2007.08.07, 11:26, Andreas Stötzner <as@signographie.de> wrote:

    >> Unicode doesn't think this difference is relevant (and rightly so
    >> IMHO), and 3. all texts ever printed in Chuvash have latin breves above
    >> "e" and "a" along with cyrillic breves above "i", so it would be the
    >> expected result.
    >
    > Am I right in assuming that you mean the co-called *i-kratkoje* (short
    > i) with the notion [cyrillic breves above "i"] –?

    Yes, I meant that one.

    > If so, I wonder if this cyrillic-specific diacriticum is to be called
    > “breve” at all.
    >
    > Though it seems to have the same function as the Latin breve I doubt if
    > the shape of the Latin breve is appropriate for Cyrillic.

    It looks like a crescent pointing up, it was inspired by Latin notation
    for short (_breve_) vowels, and looks like the Latin script breve in
    handwriting and sans-serif type.

    Its use over cyrillic "i" is a relatively modern innovation and over "u"
    (in Ukrainian and Belarusian), "zh" (in Moldavian), "a" and "e" (in
    Chuvash) even more so.

    I suppose that the glyphic differences were caused by some type design
    accident and simply become traditional, not unlike Polish, Slovak and
    Czech acutes which are sometimes less slanted than their French, Spanish
    or Portuguese counterparts.

    FWIW, cyrillic serif breves over "i", "u" and "zh" look like telephone
    handsets (pointing up) with visible blobs/lobes, while those over "a" and
    "e" (which I saw in Chuvash texts) are crescents (geometrically, the
    intersection of two close discs). See image <043904D1.gif>.

    I.e., those which needed a new punch to be cut have an original form,
    those which could be borrowed from French — have not. I'm betting on a
    meaningless typographical history accident. *If* there's a need to stress
    this variance in plain text, then I'm sure a variant selector would quite
    suffice.

    > There is a naming inconsistency in the Cyrillic Block:
    > 0419 CYRILLIC … LETTER SHORT I
    > 040E CYRILLIC … LETTER SHORT U
    > but
    > 04D0 CYRILLIC … LETTER A WITH BREVE
    > 04D0 CYRILLIC … LETTER A WITH BREVE

    Plus:
    U+04C2 CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER ZHE WITH BREVE
    U+04C1 CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER ZHE WITH BREVE

    > yet in any of these cases the glyphs show the cyrillic form of the
    > (breve) with strong terminals.

    Commendable over-correctness, perhaps? But lobes on the diacritics over
    "a" and "e" is something I never saw in Chuvash texts composed in serif
    faces (neither in lead, typeset of digital media), which is striking when
    an "i" with breve occurs nearby.

    -- ____.
    António MARTINS-Tuválkin | ()|
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    043904D1.gif

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