Re: Hebrew Vav Holam

From: Ted Hopp (ted@newslate.com)
Date: Thu Jul 31 2003 - 16:18:54 EDT

  • Next message: Peter Kirk: "Re: Hebrew Vav Holam"

    On Thursday, July 31, 2003 3:03 PM, Michael Everson wrote:
    > We do not encode any HEBREW VOWELs. We encode LETTERs and combining marks.

    I agree with the "do not" if it's descriptive of current practice. If it's
    prescriptive, I'd have to ask why. (And please don't say "stability policy"!
    :))

    There are exactly two Hebrew vowels that are spacing glyphs: holam male and
    shuruq. Neither one is encoded in Unicode. Neither one is a Hebrew letter
    (in the traditional sense) nor is either a combining mark. I thought some
    new nomenclature was in order. Since there are general category Lo code
    points with names like LAO VOWEL SIGN AA [0EB0], I went with that. (Maybe I
    shouldn't have dropped the "SIGN".)

    It seems wrong to be calling a base character a HEBREW MARK. It also seems a
    little odd to be calling a Hebrew vowel a HEBREW LETTER when every other
    HEBREW LETTER is a consonant. But if that's what convention requires....

    Ted

    Ted Hopp, Ph.D.
    ZigZag, Inc.
    ted@newSLATE.com
    +1-301-990-7453

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