Glottal stops (bis) (was RE: Missing African Latin letters (bis))

From: Kenneth Whistler (kenw@sybase.com)
Date: Fri Dec 05 2003 - 19:18:34 EST

  • Next message: Peter Constable: "RE: Glottal stops (bis) (was RE: Missing African Latin letters (bis))"

    Peter said:

    > > On this list we
    > > have discussed the relation of
    > >
    > > U+0294 LATIN SMALL LETTER GLOTTAL STOP
    >
    > Actually, is LATIN LETTER GLOTTAL STOP. It is only the general category
    > property in the UCS that suggests lowercase.
    >
    >
    > > with an x-height *LATIN SMALL LETTER GLOTTAL STOP used in Athapascan.
    > >
    > > What shall we do? Research seems required. ;-)
    >
    > I think what seems required is simply to add a new character for the
    > lowercase and change the property of 0294 to Lu.

    Yee gawds, no!

    Athapascan and every other North American language and language
    family with glottal stops would have been using U+0294 for
    its (case-unmarked) glottal stop for years now.

    If anybody needs an explicitly uppercase glottal stop, then argue
    the case (*hehe*) for that. But it is decidely wrong to take
    what has all along been the unmarked/lowercase glottal stop,
    reinterpret it as an *uppercase* glottal stop and introduce
    a new lowercase glottal stop. *That* would result in endless
    confusion and in data corruption.

    Look at the text of Pullum and Ladusaw, p. 211. All those
    x-height forms are simply glyph variants. If someone is
    taking the cap-height form and *distinguishing* it as a
    capital letter, then fine, come up with a new encoding for
    it, but don't mess with the basic glottal stop itself.

    --Ken



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