From: Radovan Garabik (garabik@melkor.dnp.fmph.uniba.sk)
Date: Mon Dec 22 2003 - 04:06:45 EST
On Fri, Dec 19, 2003 at 12:10:29AM +0100, Philippe Verdy wrote:
> >
> > "Hácek" (pronounced hatchek, with the 'h' expirated,
> > and with 'a' pronounced nearly like a short schwa) also means
> > "little hook" in Czech...
"a" in "háček" is not pronounced like a short schwa, it is _long_ a [aː]
> >
> > 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.
>
I am now looking at a book printed in 1932, it has exactly the same
form of háček as contemporary texts (symemtrical one). Even better, I have
here one Slovak book published in 1846, and it uses moder form of "háček"s
(perhaps they should not be called like this when discussing other languages
than Czech), even on "t" "d" and "l" letters (no apostrophe-like form).
> For now I can find this interesting page, which shows some dissymetric
> shapes for the hacek diacritic in printed forms (however it is still
> angular and reflects only modern use).
>
> http://www.typo.cz/_cetba/cetba-clanky-souv.html
>
Beware, text at the picture displaying the dissymetric háček says that
it is form designed Preissig (whoever he was) and that his notion of
diacritics can look too striking and decorated (and indeed does to me).
> Other references for "hácky" or "hácek" are found on the same typo.cz
> website:
> http://search.atomz.com/search/?sp-q=h%E1%E8ek&sp-a=sp0112ee00&sp-p=any&sp-f
> =Windows-1250
> But I can't read Czech to know what it really speaks about.
result of searching for "háček" with a search machine? (that is the
link)
>
> Other typographic sources in Czech include also dissymetric hacek,
> with the left side often bolder than the right side, also demonstrating
as the www page says, it was common in pre-WWII typography.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------- | Radovan Garabík http://melkor.dnp.fmph.uniba.sk/~garabik/ | | __..--^^^--..__ garabik @ melkor.dnp.fmph.uniba.sk | ----------------------------------------------------------- Antivirus alert: file .signature infected by signature virus. Hi! I'm a signature virus! Copy me into your signature file to help me spread!
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