Re: Aramaic unification and information retrieval

From: Peter Kirk (peterkirk@qaya.org)
Date: Sun Dec 21 2003 - 15:28:06 EST

  • Next message: Michael Everson: "Re: Aramaic unification and information retrieval"

    On 20/12/2003 16:02, jameskass@att.net wrote:

    >.
    >Peter Kirk wrote,
    >
    >
    >
    >>>There are no distinctive features other than glyph shapes
    >>>distinguishing Hebrew, Phoenician, Samaritan and "Early Aramaic" as
    >>>proposed in ...
    >>>
    >>>
    >
    >Couldn't the same observation be made about many of the Indic scripts?
    >
    >Best regards,
    >
    >James Kass
    >.
    >
    >
    Very probably. (Or perhaps not, if we can believe Philippe this time.) I
    understand that some languages including Sanskrit are written in several
    different Indic scripts. But the difference is that there are user
    communities which want the Indic scripts to be encoded separately (or at
    least I presume that there actually are, and this was not done
    unilaterally by UTC and WG2 without checking on user requirements).

    If there is actually user communities for these Semitic scripts which do
    want separately encoded scripts (as there probably is for Samaritan, but
    the community's requirements should be checked), then by all means let's
    encode separate scripts. But if the requirement is deduced only by
    someone who is not a user but has read Daniels & Bright... well, in that
    case we require better evidence, and criteria to distinguish glyph
    variation from separate writing systems.

    -- 
    Peter Kirk
    peter@qaya.org (personal)
    peterkirk@qaya.org (work)
    http://www.qaya.org/
    


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