Re: why Aramaic now

From: Mark E. Shoulson (mark@kli.org)
Date: Thu Dec 25 2003 - 22:34:34 EST

  • Next message: Dean Snyder: "Ancient Northwest Semitic Script (was Re: why Aramaic now)"

    On 12/25/03 16:46, Elaine Keown wrote:

    > Elaine Keown
    >
    >Dear Mark and List:
    >
    >
    >
    >>>Some of the sets of symbols I found--- snip
    >>>--are innately controversial because of the
    >>>
    >>>
    >>Roadmap.
    >>
    >>
    >
    >Examples of innately controversial for Mark:
    >I think Hebrew's been written since 1,150 B.C. But at
    >every stage it had different punctuation, at some
    >stages there were various numbers, etc.
    >
    >So I divided "Extended Hebrew"--which I now think has
    >about 300 items--into meaningful subsets. The
    >"epigraphy subset"--about 30 items, including the
    >symbols for "zuz" and "shekel" which I emailed you
    >once--is delegated by the Roadmap to a potential other
    >script.
    >
    OK... so the controversy would be that you will say they are Hebrew
    symbols and the Roadmap says they're Samaritan or Mandaic or whatever,
    is that it? That's no big deal, as far as I can tell. These are
    punctuation symbols, effectively. So what if a "Hebrew" text winds up
    using punctuation from the "Samaritan" block (or vice-versa)? Such
    usage probably ought to be noted in the informative notes on the
    characters, naturally. Cyrillic and Greek (and Hebrew) already use
    plenty of symbols from the "Latin" block, and nobody minds. Similarly,
    in some of the orthographies you mention (about which I know little)
    which use Arabic diacritics, etc, on Hebrew letters, I see nothing wrong
    with using the code-points from the Arabic blocks to encode them.
    That's what they are, after all: it's still a shadda, even if it's on
    top of a Hebrew qof (or whatever; I'm making this up).

    >Similarly, the "Samaritan subset"--about 20 items--is
    >supposedly to become part of a different subsets
    >according to the Roadmap.
    >
    So? Maybe your breakdown makes more sense, and they should be kept in a
    single "Samaritan" subset. Maybe the UTC will agree with you. And if
    they don't, what's the difference? The symbols are still encoded, still
    *the* character (not just glyph) you want, still available for use with
    Samaritan texts. They may not have "Samaritan" in their Unicode
    character-name, but that means nothing.

    I'm not saying you're wrong; you may be 100% correct. But even if you
    are, I still don't see much of a problem here.

    ~mark

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