Re: Sorting Pali in Tibetan Script

This is the Pali sorting order in PTS Pali. The Last letter is the
retroflex L:
a ā i ī u ū
e o
aṃ aaṃ iṃ iiṃ uṃ uuṃ
eṃ oṃ
k kh g gh ṅ
c ch j jh ñ
ṭ ṭh ḍ ḍh ṇ
t th d dh n
p ph b bh m
y r l v
s h
ḷ

On Sat, Jul 7, 2012 at 12:14 PM, Richard Wordingham <
richard.wordingham_at_ntlworld.com> wrote:

> Can someone please advise me as to the sorting of Pali as Pali in
> Tibetan script. I need a prompt response rather than a complete
> treatment. It is possible that I have been misunderstood what I have
> been able to pull together.
>
> What I understand is the following:
>
> (a) The retroflex lateral ('LLA' in most Unicode encodings) is written
> <U+0F63 TIBETAN LETTER LA, U+0F39 TIBETAN MARK TSA -PHRU>, as at
> http://www.tipitaka.org/tibt/ .
>
> (b) For Pali, the retroflex lateral should be sorted as though a full
> letter, rather than as letter plus subscript. This is general
> international practice, embodied in scripts that have LLA encoded as an
> independent letter, such as Sinhalese (backed up by SLS 1134:2004) and
> Thai (many dictionaries).
>
> (c) The long vowel II sorts at a primary level between the short vowel I
> and the short vowel U - general practice in Indic scripts, and captured
> by ISO 14651 and the Default Unicode Collation Element Table (DUCET).
>
> Now if I am correct, this does have an interesting processing effect.
> The syllable LLII, in NFD, will be written <U+0F63, U+0F71 TIBETAN
> VOWEL SIGN AA, U+0F72 TIBETAN VOWEL SIGN I, U+0F39>, so to collate LLII
> on the basis of the constituent consonant and vowel requires the
> discontiguous contraction <U+0F63, U+0F39> and then the contraction
> <U+0F71, U+0F72> from the skipped characters. Version 6.1.0 of the
> Unicode Collation Algorithm requires the ability to do exactly this.
> However, it has been proposed that Version 6.2.0 *prohibit* this
> ability.
>
> The treatment of LL.HA could be interesting, but is not of urgent
> interest.
>
> Doubts are cast on my analysis by the rules for Tibetan collation
> given, for example at
> http://developer.mimer.com/collations/tibetan/Chilton_slides.pdf ,
> which states that U+0F71 is given a secondary weight and makes no
> mention of the long vowels, and certainly makes no mention of any LLA.
>
> If the desciption there is correct and complete, it seems that I should
> see a sort order
>
> LI <U+0F63, U+0F72> << LLI <U+0F63, U+0F72, U+0F39> <<
> LII <U+0F63, U+0F71, U+0F72> << LLII <U+0F63, U+0F71, U+0F72, U+0F39>.
>
> Is this the correct order for sorting as Tibetan? The diacritics do
> seem to apply back-to-front.
>
> Richard.
>
>
Received on Sat Jul 07 2012 - 17:48:45 CDT