At 13:06 21-10-1999 -0700, Michael Everson wrote:
>But you are wrong. CH is not a _character_ in any language. It is a set of
>strings of characters (C-H, C-h, c-h) used (sorted etc.) as a _letter_ in
>languages like Slovak, Czech, Welsh, and traditional Spanish.
Respectfully, I disagree. I cannot speak for Welsh and Spanish, but in
Slovak and Czech, CH has all characteristics of a character: It denotes a
specific sound which cannot be expressed in any other way. Nor can it be
separated into two sounds.
Many other alphabets have a separate character for this sound, e.g. the chi
in Greek, or the Cyrillic character that looks like the Roman X.
The fact that it can be constructed from two glyphs, C and H, is
irrelevant, many other characters can be so constructed (e.g. N with caron
can constructed from an N and a caron, yet it is a separate character).
It is not simply a string of characters because it cannot be separated. You
cannot, for example, divide a word at the end of a line by following the C
with a - and starting the next line with an H. It is *not* C-H, C-h, and
c-h. It is CH, Ch, and ch.
Also, ask any Slovak to tell you what the alphabet is, he will inevitably
list a H CH I within the sequence.
And, by the way, I am in no way trying to undermine your effort to have the
Klingon alphabet included in the Unicode. I just wish we treated real
languages the way their native speakers treat them, not how Western experts
perceive them.
Adam
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Tue Jul 10 2001 - 17:20:54 EDT