From: Peter Kirk (peterkirk@qaya.org)
Date: Tue Dec 23 2003 - 11:50:06 EST
On 23/12/2003 06:06, Michael Everson wrote:
> At 17:41 -0800 2003-12-22, Kenneth Whistler wrote:
>
>> If there is, however, some consensus that Samaritan and Manichaen
>> *do* deserve separate encoding consideration, how about pursuing the
>> furthering of encoding proposals for those as distinct scripts and
>> then come back around later to review the ancient forms once again
>> after some more of the pieces have fallen into place?
>
>
> Oh, Manichaean is certainly going to be encoded. The German scholars I
> met with in Prague last year have been extremely helpful in
>
I have not questioned Manichaean. But I do wonder if someone has
confused it with Mandaic. It is the latter which is a form of Aramaic,
in both language and script, and is in modern use by a small community,
which justifies its appearance on the BMP. The Manichaean script is also
derived from the early Semitic but the language it is used for is not
Semitic.
> Regarding Samaritan, there is a group of modern users certainly. This
> page http://www.orindalodge.org/kadoshsamaritan.php has a number of
> interesting links on it. Masonic scholars apparently differentiate
> between Hebrew and Samaritan.
Again, I have not questioned Samaritan. But this Masonic use seems to be
as a cipher; note that they write: "That means that you can represent
any *unpointed and unaccented* Hebrew in Samaritan type just by changing
the font." This should not be confused with the use of Samaritan script
by the continuing Samaritan community (of 654 people as of January 1st
2003, see http://thesamaritanupdate.com/). I note the following which is
written by the Samaritan community itself, at
http://www.the-samaritans.com/script.htm:
> The Samaritan script is used today by the Samaritans when writing the
> Torah (Pentateuch), prayer books, and for other religious purposes.
> Today the Samaritans in their everyday use write in Arabic or modern
> Hebrew or as this website displays some English.* *
>
-- Peter Kirk peter@qaya.org (personal) peterkirk@qaya.org (work) http://www.qaya.org/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Tue Dec 23 2003 - 12:43:24 EST