From: Philippe Verdy (verdy_p@wanadoo.fr)
Date: Thu Dec 18 2003 - 15:42:26 EST
Philippe Verdy
> Isn't a caron a model (or trademark?) for crochet hooks?
> When I look at some handwritten texts using hacek, it looks much
> more like a rounded and oblique crochet hook than to a
> reversed circumflex (as seen in Unicode charts).
>
> The handwritten hacek glyph looks approximately like this,
> it is completely rounded without the angular shape:
> (select a monospace font to view it)
>
> ##
> ###
> ###
> ### ###
> #### ###
> ### ###
> #### ####
> ############
> ######
>
> It is easily read distinctly from the breve and accute accents,
> and it's not even a mirrored comma above.
> The glyph is visibly drawn as a continuous stroke from the
> middle-left to the thiner upper-right.
I should have noted also that this handwritten glyph is coherent
with its possible notation on the right side of letters with
large ascenders, notably D, L, l and T.
Which makes sense in that case, because this apostrophe is also
more or less interpreted as a variant of the accute accent, and
not a simply reversed circumflex.
"Hacek" (pronounced hatchek, with the 'h' expirated,
and with 'a' pronounced nearly like a short schwa) also means
"little hook" in Czech...
So the rounded "hook" glyph makes sense here, where the angular shape
in Unicode charts is suspect and may have come from a historic bad
interpretation of the Czech hatchek accent of by other latinists
and typographers, who may have just borrowed the same metal shape
used for circumflex to print Czech texts.
If someone can find in a Czech library some old Handwritten scripts
or even some source of Czech calligraphy, we could see if the
angular modern form of hacek corresponds to its initial shape.
__________________________________________________________________
<< ella for Spam Control >> has removed Spam messages and set aside
Newsletters for me
You can use it too - and it's FREE! http://www.ellaforspam.com
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Thu Dec 18 2003 - 16:31:38 EST