L2/06-398

Source: Anshuman Pandey <pandey@umich.edu>
Date: 2006-11-07 16:36:17 -0800
Subject: Comments on L2/06-373 (addition of 'apostrophe' to Devanagari)


To:

Rick McGowan
Deborah Anderson

Re: Comments on L2/06-373 (addition of 'apostrophe' to Devanagari)

I've read through the Government of India's (GOI) proposal (L2/06-373) for 
the apostrophe-like letter. I've seen this mark used in Dogri and 
Maithili books that are typeset in Devanagari. I have not looked at Bodo 
books in Devanagari. In any case, Devanagari is not the traditional 
script of any of these languages. The mark in question is historically 
derived from the Latin apostrophe to signify the linguistic features of 
Bodo, Dogri, and Maithili specified in the GOI's proposal.

The mark is not found in the repertoire of the Maithili (Tirhuta) script 
or the traditional script of Dogri, that being Takri (Takari/Tankri).
I am not a specialist of the Bodo or Dogri languages, so I will limit my 
comments specifically to Maithili. In Maithili, the mark is used only 
when representing the language in Devanagari. As such, it may be 
technically considered part of the repertoire of Devanagari as used for 
writing Maithili. But, the question is whether the mark is seen by 
Maithili users as a Latin 'apostrophe' or as a fundamental component of 
the Devanagari extension for Maithili.

The GOI's main case for the addition of the 'apostrophe' to the 
Devanagari block rests upon (a) limiting the need to switch between 
Latin and Devanagari fonts to obtain the 'apostrophe' when writing Dogri 
in Devanagari; and (b) the technical hinderance of using punctuation mark 
in IDNs (internationalized domain names).

These are fair concerns, however, they raise further questions, which may 
or may not be pertinent to the criteria by which UTC assesses requests for 
the addition of new characters. For (a): Most Devanagari Unicode fonts 
contain the Latin repertoire. Is writing a Latin apostrophe in Devanagari 
to represent the Dogri tone marker any different from writing a Latin text 
period or question mark to indicate sentence and phrase boundaries in 
Devanagari? Meaning, how much more difficult is it to switch fonts to 
obtain the apostrophe than to do so for obtaining other Latin punctuation 
marks. For (b): are the contexts in which the 'apostrophe' is used in 
Bodo, Dogri, or Maithili likely ever to be used in the creation of IDNs?

The proposal also contains some items which do not appear directly related 
to the issue of the 'apostrophe'. What does the GOI intend with its 
discussion of the rendering of candrabindu in Maithili? The figure (no 
pagination in the proposal, but PDF page 21), which is marked in the 
original source in Devanagari as page 178, shows positioning troubles in 
the printing of candrabindu. The figure shows that the candrabindu is 
centered above the letter it is written, expect when it written with an 
above-base vowel sign. In such cases, the candrabindu is written slightly 
to the right of the vowel sign. How is this matter related to the 
'apostrophe' sign?

Another issue is that the GOI did not a name for the character. It 
mentions the name of the mark in the Bodo, Dogri, and Maithili language, 
all of which are different. What name is being proposed for the character 
in the UCS?

I think that the proposal needs to be revised before further 
consideration. A more detailed discussion of the specific function 
of the 'apostrophe' and the contexts in which it is used will be useful in 
determining whether the mark truly is part of the Devanagari script or is 
fundamentally the Latin apostrophe.

Thank you for the opportunity to provide comments on this proposal.

Sincerely,

Anshuman Pandey
Department of History
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, Michigan