Re: Corrections to Glagolitic

From: Patrick Andries (patrick.andries@xcential.com)
Date: Sun May 15 2005 - 23:11:02 CDT

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    Michael Everson a écrit :

    >
    >> I admit my ignorance of Glagolitic but looking at the Unicode 4.1
    >> chart and the proposal, I had a few Beotian questions.
    >
    >
    > Questions "of or relating to ancient Boeotia or its people or to the
    > dialect spoken there in classical times; "Boeotian dialects"?

    [PA] Thank you, Michael. They were not reputed to be erudites ;-)
    Somewhat like the Philistines, apparently better known.

    >
    >> I was just wondering where the non spidery Glagolitic HA could be.
    >
    >
    > U+2C48 HERU corresponds to U+0445 HA.

    [PA] Yes, I know (I mentioned it in my message lower down) but the point
    is that HERU is Glagolitic and found in the Glagolitic block, HA is
    Cyrillic (and not a very good transcription at that) and not found in
    the Glagolitic alphabet. Why not give the Glagolitic name to a
    Glagolotic letter ? KHERU.
    (« Der Name dieses Buchstabens entsprcht dem griechischen Gruss khaire
    (χαιρε), was die Slaven in Thessanolike cherъ ausprachen », p. 19 Über
    den Ursprung der Glagolica,Vojtech Tkadlcik, p. 19 in Glagolitica)

    >
    >> ISO 6861:1996(E) identifies this « spidery ha » as a HER
    >> (HERU/KHERU). HA is the modern Russian name in Unicode and ISO 6861
    >> transcriptions for this rare Glagolitic HER (KHERU) (see page 5 of
    >> ISO 6861:1996).
    >
    >
    > ISO 6861 identifies the HERU and the SPIDERY HA. That is not the same
    > thing as presenting an authoritative name for the latter.
    >
    >> (Often called KHA for Russian, which I think is a better transcription).
    >
    >
    > Irrelevant.
    >
    [PA] So you say, but you may have noticed a discussion about possibly
    improved Unicode names. Also since these letters [K]HERU and [K]HA are
    both descendant from KHI and the KH transcriptions reflect more faithful
    the pronunciation, I wondered why HERU was chosen here (in the
    non-spidery form).

    >> Is ISO 6861:1996(E) wrong here and is this another thing than a rare
    >> variant of Glagolitic HERU/KHERU ? Just want to understand.
    >
    >
    > SPIDERY HA is a "variant" of HERU thought significant enough to encode
    > by the experts who participated in the encoding process.

    [PA] Ok. Thank you. Incidentally, I don't disagree with you on the
    encoding decision, just the name.

    > LATINATE MYSLITE is another such variant.
    >
    [PA] What does the latinate refer to here ? I understand the word, but
    why is it used here ?

    >> Other small questions : any reason for the use of J in some cases and
    >> Y in other cases to represent the iotified letters (POKOJI/ZEMLJA but
    >> YERU/YERI/YUS).
    >
    >
    > The whole thing is a bit of a mess, what with Glagolitic names to
    > transliterate, Russian Cyrillic names to transliterate, and Croatian
    > names not to transliterate. Discussion of names occurred in October
    > 2002. For some reason we decided to Stick with YERU and YUS, I suppose
    > because of the Cyrillic block. On the other hand we have CI and not
    > TSI. So the names seem to be a mixture of transliteration systems.

    [PA] I agree.

    >
    >> Incidentally N2610R says that U+2C26 had as name YO in ISO 6861:1996,
    >> this is not strictly true, it was JO. (I thought names were important
    >> for cross-standard references).
    >
    >
    > *shrugs* THe comment in N2610R refers to the name, not the spelling, I
    > suppose. All of this is water under the bridge.
    >
    [PA] Yes, it would have been nice to have a bit more regularity (Y/J)
    that is all I'm trying to say. And are ISO names of no importance in
    cross-standard references (in other words, should Unicode have kept some
    of the ISO 6861 names ?).

    >> And why does Y represent a hard I (in contemporean Russian phonology)
    >> in MYSLITE but a soft I (according to my Russian sources) in BUKY.
    >
    >
    > Consonants are "hard" or "soft" in Slavic, not vowels.

    [PA] Nitpicking, Why is ы sometimes called hard i ? At least it is very
    common in French, Petit Larousse Illustré : «y (i dur) » and not
    uncommon in English
    <http://www.lahti.fi/museot/konferenssi/Russian_language.pdf>.

    > Please count the letters. BUKY has five of them in Glagolitic.

    [PA] This is true, thanks. Now this being said I do have BUKI mentioned
    in several other sources (see Glagolitica p. 234 for instance, Alexander
    Kh in his initial message and other modern Russian sources apparently).
    What is the source of the name on page 5 of the proposal ? We can take
    this offline if you want (a Russian-speaker reviewing the Glagolitic
    French names mentioned this final Y as an error).

    >
    >> Why ? It this an initial izhe at the end of both words ? Initial at
    >> the end ?
    >
    >
    > (You know, in English, we do not precede a question mark with a space.
    > We don't use guillemets either. It makes things much easier to read.)

    [PA] ;-) We find that the spaces and guillemet make things much easier
    to read.

    >
    > As I recall, both are called IZHE,

    [PA] Yes, I think this is correct (other names may exist though, «inogo,
    imeni» ? see Glagolitica, p. 52, « hic » p. 49 ).

    > and we called one INITIAL because it tends to come first and because
    > we needed to have unique names.

    [PA] Do you have any source for this ?

    What I have mentions two theories for the need of these two izhe : 1)
    the two triangular izhe [U+2C0A] is apparently used mainly for the « i »
    conjunction [i without the prothetic "y"/yod in areas other than Moravia
    [Glagolitica, pp. 24-25], 2) it indicates the front i, while the vase
    shaped Izhe [U+2C09] represents the central i (ɨ) [cf. Glagolitica, pp
    59-65]. Could it be that the initial should be interpreted as front here
    ? In other words, could it be that the word describes here a phonetic
    aspect rather than one related to the writing position ? Again, just
    trying to understand.

    Regards,

    P. A.



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