Re: Aramaic, Samaritan, Phoenician

From: John Cowan (cowan@mercury.ccil.org)
Date: Tue Jul 15 2003 - 09:22:04 EDT

  • Next message: Michael Everson: "Re: Aramaic, Samaritan, Phoenician"

    Michael Everson scripsit:

    > >Latg is older than the current use of Latn, though not than Latn's
    > >ancestor.
    >
    > You're wrong. Latg is older than Latc (Carolingian) but it is not a
    > separate script.

    VVELLIFYOVCOVNTANCIENTROMANSTYLEASORDINARYLATINSCRIPTTHENYES.

    > >Some Latg characters are hard to identify if all you know is Latn.
    > >But we don't encode them separately.
    >
    > Thorn and Wynn and Gha and Ou and Ezh and lots of other Latin letters
    > are hard to identify if all you know is Latn.

    If I don't know Gha, and I see it, I know I don't recognize it: it's a
    novel letter. (And I may even think it says "OI".) If I see a Gaelic-style
    G and fail to recognize it *as* a G, that's quite different.

    > > > And the Samaritan Pentateuch is often printed in the Samaritan script.
    > >
    > >A font difference would handle that.
    >
    > Naaaah.

    Even now that German uses Antiqua almost exclusively, you might find a
    Lutherbibel printed recently in Fraktur.

    > >mutual
    > >intelligibility, which was the main criterion for separating Glagolitic
    > >from Cyrillic.
    >
    > I don't think it was. Glagolitic and Cyrillic are obviously two
    > different scripts.

    From UTR #3:

    # In the encoding, Glagolitic is treated as a separate script from
    # Cyrillic, principally because the letter shapes are in most cases
    # totally unrelated, with differences not at all arising from "mere
    # font style".

    And from p. 171 (section 7.3) of TUS 3.0:

    # The Unicode standard regards Glagolitic as a *separate* script from
    # Cyrillic, not as a font change from Cyrillic. This position is taken
    # primarily because Glagolitic appears unrecognizably different from
    # Cyrillic, and secondarily because Glagolitic has not grown to match
    # the expansion of Cyrillic.

    > that no one who was could easily read a newspaper article written in
    > Phoenician or Samaritan letters.

    Here's where we need first-hand testimony.

    -- 
    After fixing the Y2K bug in an application:     John Cowan
            WELCOME TO <censored>                   jcowan@reutershealth.com
            DATE: MONDAK, JANUARK 1, 1900           http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
    


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